Would this be useful on Mars?
Vaccum-chamber quantum sensor device could allow GPS-free navigation
41–50 of 85 posts
Re: Vaccum-chamber quantum sensor device could allow GPS-free navigation
#42Article seems a little short on numbers. Just how slowly does this drift out of true?
Re: Vaccum-chamber quantum sensor device could allow GPS-free navigation
#43I would think camera-based navigation would be fairly successful at this point. We can easily store large amounts of image and terrain data, and deep learning based image recognition systems are quite powerful. I would think that by limiting your image search space based on your likely position would make the problem even easier to solve.
Terrain based navigation is certainly nothing new(1950s?), so there is probably a large pool of research into it, but I wonder what's been done with recent pattern recognition advances?
Re: Vaccum-chamber quantum sensor device could allow GPS-free navigation
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I heard that the effect of double integration is bad, attempting it as a student with consumer MEMS devices was quite dramatic. Really underscores the importance of Kalman filters and updates from sensors with fewer derivatives.
You mean like... GPS? I used to work on AUVs with inertial navigation, and a Kalman filter accepting input from GPS at the surface and a DVL or similar underwater, as well as the inertial unit, was pretty much standard equipment. The device in the article has to have miraculously low error in order to eliminate the need for GPS.
Miraculous vaporware hype until proven otherwise. Something working in a lab is vastly different from manufacturable.
Re: Vaccum-chamber quantum sensor device could allow GPS-free navigation
#45The innovation here appear to be the chamber. (caveat: I still need to read the paper). A few thoughts follow. They are going for a UHV***, probably Still a lot of other work to do though. I see a table full of optics to make the MOT*. Also see a pair of anti-Helmholtz coils for the magnetic field. They could maybe replace those coils (which probably drive a few amps) with permanent magnets (assuming they don't need…
Does passive pumping mean a chamber full of baked zeolite or something that's then chilled to adsorb all the gas? I guess I should read the paper too, but I don't have a copy.
Re: Vaccum-chamber quantum sensor device could allow GPS-free navigation
#46I would think camera-based navigation would be fairly successful at this point. We can easily store large amounts of image and terrain data, and deep learning based image recognition systems are quite powerful. I would think that by limiting your image search space based on your likely position would make the problem even easier to solve. Terrain based navigation is certainly nothing new(1950s?), so there is probably…
There’s still the issue of compute power required for a lot of the CV algorithms you’d want to use. There’s also the question of what data you are using; Satellite imagery is much harder to match with a ground perspective and ground imagery(e.g street view) is very tedious to collect and keep updated.
In areas with unique features (dense urban) localizing to within ~50ft has been demonstrated pretty robustly but more accurate methods of localization are a lot more variable and depend on the datasets, cameras (monocular vs stereo), compute, etc.
Re: Vaccum-chamber quantum sensor device could allow GPS-free navigation
#47I would think camera-based navigation would be fairly successful at this point. We can easily store large amounts of image and terrain data, and deep learning based image recognition systems are quite powerful. I would think that by limiting your image search space based on your likely position would make the problem even easier to solve. Terrain based navigation is certainly nothing new(1950s?), so there is probably…
> I would think camera-based navigation would be fairly successful at this point. We can easily store large amounts of image and terrain data, and deep learning based image recognition systems are quite powerful.
Aside from the fact that the amount of data required for that would be orders of magnitudes larger than you can reasonably store, that wouldn't work at all in areas with little terrain features like deserts or the open sea.
Re: Vaccum-chamber quantum sensor device could allow GPS-free navigation
#48I would think camera-based navigation would be fairly successful at this point. We can easily store large amounts of image and terrain data, and deep learning based image recognition systems are quite powerful. I would think that by limiting your image search space based on your likely position would make the problem even easier to solve. Terrain based navigation is certainly nothing new(1950s?), so there is probably…
> I would think camera-based navigation would be fairly successful at this point. We can easily store large amounts of image and terrain data, and deep learning based image recognition systems are quite powerful. Aside from the fact that the amount of data required for that would be orders of magnitudes larger than you can reasonably store, that wouldn't work at all in areas with little terrain features like deserts…
Or just a dense forest.
Re: Vaccum-chamber quantum sensor device could allow GPS-free navigation
#49This reminds me of a spacecraft navigation system that employed an almost perfect sphere, that floated inside the centre of chamber that employed a detection system that corrected the spacecrafts direction to keep the sphere in the centre of the chamber. On the drawings it was referred to as the space crafts "consciousness"
Unfortunately i cannot find any reference to it anywhere.
Re: Vaccum-chamber quantum sensor device could allow GPS-free navigation
#50DARPA has been funding work on better gyros and accelerometers for about 10 years now. MEMS gyros keep getting better. The good ones are down to a few degrees per hour.[1] That IMU/GPS is $3,386.09. Not down to the phone/vacuum cleaner price point yet. This is nowhere near as good as the device described in the parent article, but it's good enough for a lot of applications. If you can get a GPS fix every few minutes,…
GPS is trivial to jam. Any exotic IMU has huge defense implications. Being able to miniaturize it would be a big deal.
I thought so for a long time, but then learned about spread-spectrum and frequency-hopping (with cryptographically randomized pattern) radio communication techniques which are employed in military-grade communications, and suddenly reliably jamming GPS without jamming literally everything becomes very hard.