DARPA Develops Non-GPS Navigation Chip

Zothecula writes "The Global Positioning System (GPS) has proved a boon for those with a bad sense of direction, but the satellite-based system isn't without its shortcomings. Something as simple as going indoors or entering a tunnel can render the system useless. That might be inconvenient for civilians, but it's potentially disastrous to military users, for whom the system was originally built. DARPA is addressing such concerns with the development of a self-sufficient navigation system that can aid navigation when GPS is temporarily unavailable."

Comments

Bullet with GPS?

[roman_mir]

âoeBoth the structural layer of the sensors and the integrated package are made of silica,â said Andrei Shkel, DARPA program manager. âoeThe hardness and the high-performance material properties of silica make it the material of choice for integrating all of these devices into a miniature package. The resulting TIMU is small enough and should be robust enough for applications (when GPS is unavailable or limited for a short period of time) such as personnel tracking, handheld navigation, small diameter munitions and small airborne platforms.â

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well, now they will have their self aiming bullets and self propelling, self aiming, manoeuvring grenades.

I say bullets and grenades, because why else would you care to track indoors, it's not a missile or a big bomb that will go there, a big bomb will just take your entire 'indoors' and make it 'outdoors'. Bullets and self propelled grenades on the other hand...

At least it's nice to know that at some point some of this may end up in civilian robotics, otherwise it's just terrible. You thought you could hide in your house from a drone machine gun? No, now we'll have crazy smart bullets to take care of the terrorists, that's right, the terrorists in their caves.

Drone planes, drone bombs, drone missiles, soon drone bullets, drone knives. They really don't like having to give orders to actual people, do they, knowing that people may not always take the orders if they disagree with them.