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Royal Navy says quantum navigation test a success

thequantuminsider.com

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Re: Royal Navy says quantum navigation test a success

#81
post #3

You know exactly where you are but you can't figure out how fast you're going. (I'm sorry) But seriously, this article is light on details. Is this just fancy dead-reckoning?

> But seriously, this article is light on details

I'd expect it to be light on details. It is a project funded by the Royal Navy for next-generation navigation. Thye don't really want to give away details other than, "we have this"

A recent TV news report covered this in the UK. The only thing they could show was an prototype in a lab setting and a sealed white box on the test platform boat.

Re: Royal Navy says quantum navigation test a success

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US military is working on a device that can use stars to determine location even during the day.

Couldn’t that be just celestial navigation with a very specific notch filter for starlight wavelengths? So you can see stars in daylight?

Stars are broadband light sources, there isn't a specific starlight wavelength. Likewise, the Raleigh scattering in the atmosphere is largely a broadband source of light, since it is a reflection of our sun's light. You might get some slight benefit by looking at the redder end of the spectrum, but the improvement won't be massive.

However, stars are (to the nearest approximation) point sources. If you use a telescope and zoom in to the star, then you can spread the atmosphere brightness over a large area while concentrating the starlight into a very small area, which means you can see stars during the day. Couple that with a reasonable level of high dynamic range sensor and integration over time, and it would be quite possible to observe the positions of a load of stars during the day.

Re: Royal Navy says quantum navigation test a success

#83

The Imperial College researcher who builds these things describes his research here: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/centre-for-cold-matter/research/q... The page claims that this device attempts to measure acceleration accurately enough that position can be determined (by integrating over time, twice).

I'm not a physicist but this reads like a more sensitive type of inertial navigation, which currently uses gyroscopes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_navigation_system

Re: Royal Navy says quantum navigation test a success

#84

This is the most obvious practical application of my PhD topic. A Bose Einstein Condensate is an extremely sensitive detector of gravity- a nuclear submarine could use it to make an ultra-accurate map of the world based on variations in the gravitational constant g. This would remove one of the primary reasons subs need to surface , in order to GPS lock. It’s a naval chart that would not require surfacing. A French p…

It's somewhat unlikely (but not impossible) that this method is based on navigating by matching patterns of the shape of the geoid (aka variations in g).

We need accurate maps of the geoid for a lot of different reasons. (Military as well as civilian. Potential fields geophysics is super useful for all kinds of different geologic use cases, and regardless, if you want to target an ICBM, you need an accurate geoid.)

However, a super precise gravimeter doesn't help much. We have more precision than we can use already. Rather ancient spring-based instruments from 100 years ago can actually still give more precision than we can use in many cases. Modern ship-borne gravity instruments work on different principles, but the signal is very noisy for the same external reasons.

The biggest issue is that you also need to know absolute elevation very precisely to use the measurement of g that you get. A few millimeters of error in elevation significantly changes the anomaly measurement you make. Sure, submarines can get accurate hydrostatic measurements of depth, but those assume a lot of things and critically aren't absolute. The ocean has currents - that's another way of saying that the surface of the ocean isn't "sea level". Those vary through time and would require satellite information to correct for. However, once you get down in the weeds, it gets tougher still.

Remember that we're dealing with an inverse square distance relationship. Things close by matter quite a lot.

People nearby standing in different positions? That actually does affect things. Easy enough to mount the instrument away from people, though. Different distributions of mass in the submarine? Also affects the measurement. You can correct for all of these in various ways, though, so long as you have information on it. It's just more complexity and another source of noise.

In the end, the "free air anomaly" measurement you'd be correcting things to is an bathymetry map, to the first order. If there's a landslide, that affects things quite a bit, and those happen all the time.

Finally, you'd be matching a "fingerprint" time series measurement as you travel to a pre made map. That's a non unique relationship. You'd have heading/etc information to help the non uniqueness part significantly, but when things don't vary much (i.e flat topography and not a ton varying geologically), you don't have much of a unique signal to match to.

At any rate, it's a very useful tool for many other things, but I'm skeptical it could be turned into a precise navigational aid. In combination with traditional gyroscopic/etc measurements of heading and distance, it could help constrain uncertainty, but it's not an independent measurement and it's relatively noisy.

Now that I think about it, though, a fully passive "seamount proximity sensor" is rather useful, and that's something you'd get even with a noisy signal...

Re: Royal Navy says quantum navigation test a success

#85
post #66
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AlphaStar hardly pawned GMs in any meaningful way. It mainly won on mechanics, even when Deepmind tried to nerf its mechanics. Probably the most important thing is that the “200 APM limit” is way higher than any human can do, because it made use of each one of its actions. Humans can reach 400+ APM by spamming, but their EPM will stay much lower than 200. The result is that it had god-tier micro that changed the game…

The word is pwned, not pawned, by the way. I suspect your autocorrect, as well as op’s has had it’s way with your prose. I often wonder how much autocorrect will shape the evolution of language.

> I often wonder how much autocorrect will shape the evolution of language

Apple recently announced that it was going to stop autocorrecting a certain expletive intensifier to "ducking", and I think that one actually had the potential to catch on....

I wonder if it'll ultimately do more to preserve ridiculous quirks of English spelling (and US/UK distinctions) most people don't remember or care about than change language

Re: Royal Navy says quantum navigation test a success

#86

This is the most obvious practical application of my PhD topic. A Bose Einstein Condensate is an extremely sensitive detector of gravity- a nuclear submarine could use it to make an ultra-accurate map of the world based on variations in the gravitational constant g. This would remove one of the primary reasons subs need to surface , in order to GPS lock. It’s a naval chart that would not require surfacing. A French p…

Would it be possible to replicate that on mobile phones? Or a special device is required? 1. trying to figure out the feasibility?

Re: Royal Navy says quantum navigation test a success

#87

This is the most obvious practical application of my PhD topic. A Bose Einstein Condensate is an extremely sensitive detector of gravity- a nuclear submarine could use it to make an ultra-accurate map of the world based on variations in the gravitational constant g. This would remove one of the primary reasons subs need to surface , in order to GPS lock. It’s a naval chart that would not require surfacing. A French p…

Would it be possible to replicate that on mobile phones? Or a special device is required? 1. trying to figure out the feasibility?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose%E2%80%93Einstein_condensa...

"n condensed matter physics, a Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) is a state of matter that is typically formed when a gas of bosons at very low densities is cooled to temperatures very close to absolute zero (−273.15 °C or −459.67 °F)..."

I guess, a special device is needed. The size of such device will be in thousands of mobile phones just in volume needed.

Yet, it is feasible. ;)

Re: Royal Navy says quantum navigation test a success

#89

Looks like what's happening is they've found a way to use BSEs [1] to measure small variations in the earth's gravity caused by undersea terrain, probably so that they can then use existing satelite measured data [2], to recover absolute position via Terrain Contour Matching [3] like a gulf war tomahawk missle. Edit: Seems like there's another company that's doing the same thing [4] with BSEs [5]. [1] https://physics…

What does BSE stand for? Your link doesn’t mention it.

Re: Royal Navy says quantum navigation test a success

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you do with the g measurement to get your location? Can g deltas be matched to sea floor contour maps? Otherwise it seems like subs would have to be following g-mapped routes.

With a highly detailed map, it becomes a statistical fitting problem, to locate yourself based on an estimate of position history using intertidal measurements and your time history of gravitational measurements, starting from an initial position estimate. I would imagine this could be quite accurate.

Dead reckoning with gravitational adjustments?
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