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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."
Embedded car GPS systems are linked to the car speed data, and when entering a long tunnel, will continue to move the position correctly.
For this limited scenario, it appears to the user as if the GPS was active all along.
It wouldn't be disastrous for military applications, because military navigators are all trained on how to navigate without GPS. And they practice it. Also, does anyone lose their way going into a tunnel? Maybe a mining complex or caves or something....
It works by have six-axis, extremely sensitive, gyroscopes and accelerometers. Thus it can extrapolate position within a margin of error, hopefully long enough to get back in range of GPS.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
What the article is describing (an IMU) have been around forever (since before GPS), and pretty much any system that uses GPS for navigation has one to supplement the GPS. What is new here is the size; a full IMU on a single chip the size of your pinky finger nail. Pretty cool considering that not too long ago these used to comprise of multiple separate physical devices (gyrometer x3, accellerometer x3, magnetometer), but have been getting progressively smaller over the years. MEMs has come a long way.
nothing new about gyroscopes and accelerometers in a package, even an integrated circuit one.....this might be smaller or perhaps more accurate than some I've seen over the DECADES. but definitely no new tech or ideas here.
The story here is they made a really small INU & timing module. AHRS/IMU/INU (among other acronyms) have been around for a very long time. This is simply a very, very, small one, that is probably cheaper to produce than exsiting MEMS systems. Of course, it won't have the accuracy of the larger systems, but that's part of the trade offs.
if you are indoors you probably know where you are
Says the man who never travels. Try out your theory in an airport or major mall. Heck, I would love indoor navigation for some medical complexes.
if you go into a tunnel, you will come out and get the signal again. and its not like you need to navitage inside a tunnel.
Not all tunnels have only one entry and exit point. I already missed an exit in the tunnels under Brussels on a couple of occasions. And even if all tunnels were simple one-pipe affairs... What if you need to make a turn shortly after the tunnel, and your GPS takes too long to get a fix so it still has you at the tunnel's entrance when you blissfully sail past your turn?
I'm not saying we couldn't cope without these improvements, as indeed in the past we managed to do just fine without GPS. But there's room for useful improvement nonetheless.
Install windows on my workstation? You crazy? Got any idea how much I paid for the damn thing?
As others have posted, intertial nav platforms have been around for decades -- in military aircraft, and then in commercial aircraft.
The break throughs are not only in getting the platform sensors, the gyros, accelerometers, and magnetometers, onto a single chip, but also in being able to provide the computer horsepower to do the Kalman filtering to integrate all these sensors to come out with a nav/position solution, in a few cubic centimeters of processed sand, and for a few Watts.
It's not just the sensors, it's the processing as well. The sensors just throw data at you (data with all sorts of errors); the Kalman filter lets you bring everything together for your nav/position solution. As a prof long ago said it, "Kalman filtering -- how to stop worrying and learn to love matrix inversion."
Missiles have had inertial navigation systems for some time now. Where's the advance that brings this technology to regular consumers?
DC8 jets had inertial navigation systems back in the '60s. You could fly from LAX to Tokyo without touching the controls and the plane would only be a few hundred yards off alignment from the runway. Not bad for a 5000+ mile flight.
They can take my LifeAlert pendant when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.