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A curious phenomenon called 'Etak'

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Re: A curious phenomenon called 'Etak'

#101

Post by bambax »

Fascinating article.

About this:

> Before GPS, navigation systems used a technique called ‘dead reckoning‘. Dead reckoning relied on sensors to determine distance traveled and direction of travel. However, no sensor is perfect. As a result the further you travel the greater the errors build. Pretty quickly you have no idea where you are.

> To solve this problem Etak invented ‘augmented dead reckoning’. This used a process to match the position given by the navigation sensors to a topologically correct electronic map. Whenever the vehicle turned you made the assumption that you’re driving on a road. At that point the location could be ‘snapped’ back to the road and the error from the sensors could be reset. This technique was later adopted by all navigation apps and is still in use today.

Authorities usually intercept unwanted (consumer) drones by blocking the signal between the pilot and the drone; and it's also possible to jam GPS signal.

But a drone that would use some version of "augmented dead reckoning" with a (relatively basic) analysis of features on the ground (roads, rivers, train tracks) would be able to guide itself without external input and would be virtually unstoppable (short of destruction).

Yet they don't seem to exist yet? Is this harder to do than it sounds?

Re: A curious phenomenon called 'Etak'

#102

Post by jelkand »

bambax wrote: post #101

Fascinating article. About this: > Before GPS, navigation systems used a technique called ‘dead reckoning‘. Dead reckoning relied on sensors to determine distance traveled and direction of travel. However, no sensor is perfect. As a result the further you travel the greater the errors build. Pretty quickly you have no idea where you are. > To solve this problem Etak invented ‘augmented dead reckoning’. This used a pr…

That sounds like inertial navigation with nav fixes, which predates GPS. It certainly does exist.

Re: A curious phenomenon called 'Etak'

#103

Post by hasoleju »

Now I know why the cursor from the old asteroids game looks like the position indicator in my car navigation. Great fun fact!

The Atari Team which created the game was located next to the company that built the first navigation device.

Re: A curious phenomenon called 'Etak'

#104

Post by KingOfCoders »

bsenftner wrote: post #81
KingOfCoders wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no conventional resolution to vector displays (though monitors have limitations). Reminds me at one point in time I owned a Vectrex, which had much cleaner lines than any other console, even much better than my later, much more expensive Amiga or (early) PCs. "This Vectrex does things I never thought possible" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Dv15YRAmzM Only got that feeling back with Retina displays.

I worked at the company that made the Vectrex, Jay Smith was a wonderful guy. Super brilliant too: the world of PSX Bowling games was his creation, he wrote the first bowling physics sim using Excel, and we hired some guy with a PhD in Statistics who wrote Jay's algorithm in assembly for the PSX, and the 3D bowling genre was launched.

<3

Re: A curious phenomenon called 'Etak'

#105

Post by brk »

bambax wrote: post #101

Fascinating article. About this: > Before GPS, navigation systems used a technique called ‘dead reckoning‘. Dead reckoning relied on sensors to determine distance traveled and direction of travel. However, no sensor is perfect. As a result the further you travel the greater the errors build. Pretty quickly you have no idea where you are. > To solve this problem Etak invented ‘augmented dead reckoning’. This used a pr…

>Authorities usually intercept unwanted (consumer) drones by blocking the signal >between the pilot and the drone;

Curious which country you are in where you see this occurring.

Re: A curious phenomenon called 'Etak'

#106

Post by jmbwell »

georgemcbay wrote: post #39
teleforce wrote: post #28

>Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything. Or so said Steve Jobs when he announced iPhone in 2007. Interestingly, one of Etak co-founders was Nolan Bushnell, and he was Atari co-founder that hired Steve Jobs (or specifically Allan Alcorn) in his only full-time job prior to Apple, pardon the pun.

A very long time ago (~1996-1997) I worked for a company in Sunnyvale called Vicinity which made mapblast, a website now so lost to time that google will assume you are typoing mapquest if you search for it. The company was eventually sold (well after I had left) to Microsoft and became part of MSN I believe. The tech behind mapblast also powered the first version of Yahoo Maps, which was a pretty big deal at the tim…

Being buried by Google because there’s a more marketable search result isn’t the same as being lost to time. Not yet anyway

Re: A curious phenomenon called 'Etak'

#107

Post by defrost »

brk wrote: post #105
bambax wrote: post #101

Fascinating article. About this: > Before GPS, navigation systems used a technique called ‘dead reckoning‘. Dead reckoning relied on sensors to determine distance traveled and direction of travel. However, no sensor is perfect. As a result the further you travel the greater the errors build. Pretty quickly you have no idea where you are. > To solve this problem Etak invented ‘augmented dead reckoning’. This used a pr…

>Authorities usually intercept unwanted (consumer) drones by blocking the signal >between the pilot and the drone; Curious which country you are in where you see this occurring.

Singapore, Germany, the UK, USA, Australia, .. countries with airports that want domestic security, etc.

https://www.trd.sg/

https://hp-jammer.de/en/drohnenabwehr/

etc.

Once you start looking at GPS spoofing, etc. it gets quasi-military, non-commercial, requires credentiuals | LEO contacts, ways to work around checks and balances:

https://www.regulus.com/ is Israeli miltech, other companies in other countries are similar.

Re: A curious phenomenon called 'Etak'

#108

Post by bix6 »

btbuildem wrote: post #98
SamBam wrote: post #17

The name is perfect. "Etak" refers to a system of navigation used by Micronesian and Polynesian seafarers to navigate from island to island in the vast Pacific Ocean. Much like this device, it operates by "augmented dead reckoning" (as it says in TFA). The etak system of navigation involves navigating by stars and ocean swells to get the heading, but a key issue when navigating by dead reckoning over long distances i…

I've read somewhere that part of the method they intuited their way was to read the waves. As faraway land masses can affect the shape of waves, supposedly these navigators could "see" beyond the horizon due to how the swell was behaving. I can sort of see that in a mind's eye, with rings of waves spreading as they bounce off obstacles in water. But that's bird's view of a miniature -- and seeing that from the surfac…

https://worldhistorycommons.org/marshall-islands-stick-chart

It’s amazing they can read such nuance.

Re: A curious phenomenon called 'Etak'

#109

Post by lsaferite »

light_hue_1 wrote: post #30

> To solve this problem Etak invented ‘augmented dead reckoning’. This used a process to match the position given by the navigation sensors to a topologically correct electronic map. Whenever the vehicle turned you made the assumption that you’re driving on a road. At that point the location could be ‘snapped’ back to the road and the error from the sensors could be reset. This technique was later adopted by all navi…

I mean, if that paper wasn't declassified until 2017, what are they chances they knew about the prior art exactly?

I'm not disputing your assertion, but perhaps I'm a little more charitable in thinking they could have independently invented the same thing and believed they were the first since the one you mentioned was apparently classified.

Re: A curious phenomenon called 'Etak'

#110

Post by flerchin »

bambax wrote: post #101

Fascinating article. About this: > Before GPS, navigation systems used a technique called ‘dead reckoning‘. Dead reckoning relied on sensors to determine distance traveled and direction of travel. However, no sensor is perfect. As a result the further you travel the greater the errors build. Pretty quickly you have no idea where you are. > To solve this problem Etak invented ‘augmented dead reckoning’. This used a pr…

Tomahawk missiles do this, as do many other munitions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TERCOM
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