I don't think some people posting here understand that video-based detection, the subject of this paper, is not the current object detection modality for Google's autonomous vehicles. Those primarily use LiDAR to detect people, cyclist, vehicles, and other objects. It is much easier and much more reliable to detect objects with LiDAR compared to video-based detection as you get a nice cluster of 3D points without having to worry about whether the sun is out or even in light fog or dusty conditions.
I believe Google would certainly like to use video more, as cameras are cheaper than LiDAR, but there's still a ways to go before video/image-based techniques will be as reliable as LiDAR.
Red Whittaker founded Astrobotic Technology - I don't know why this "article" is written as if he's joining the company. And the company does have long-term aspirations for the moon and the Google X Prize allows it to offset the cost of development, assuming they win, of course.
Then the article goes on to say that the "only remaining problem" is handling very low temperatures - while I'm sure it's definitely a problem, I highly doubt that that's the only thing left to be solved.
Bottom Line: Ignore TFA, just read the Astrobotic blog entry.
Minor disclaimer: Dr. Whittaker was my master's thesis advisor.
It's all about build cost. Mounting the chip at 90 degrees means a separate PCB, mounting connectors, and physical space. All things that drive up the cost of the device.
There have been earlier dual axis gyros. In fact, Invensense released some years ago. What's new here is that this measures pitch and yaw (X/Z rotation) rather than the pitch and roll (X/Y rotation) that earlier dual axis gyros measured.
Actually, no. This is the IXZ-500/650 that they are talking about, which measures pitch and yaw (rotations about the X and Z axes). The IDG-600 which you link to is the older gyro which measures pitch and roll (rotations about the X/Z) axes.
And as far as getting 3-axes goes, pairing one of Invensense's X/Y dual axis gyros with their single axis Z gyro would give you that in a single plane.
For those saying this is the part in the MotionPlus, it's not. That's using the IDG-600 which the parent talks about.
As the article mentions, this is for apps where you only want pitch/yaw and don't care about roll, as in a typical remote control application where you're waving up/down and left/right.
The spelling is painful, certainly, but some of the word choices are particularly terrible as well:
The first major step in assembling this project is the tear down. We latterly (sic) striped (sic) this scooter down to the frame. Almost every major body part had some custom work done to it to facilitate all the gadgets in this project.
The summary is incorrect - Weston was not offered $80 million for the design, NASA simply wanted to use their design for an $80 million dollar mission.
From TFA:
When high-ranking NASA officials saw a flight test, they were impressed enough to include the team in an $80 million dollar mission to the moon.
Which makes far more sense - why would NASA pay money for a design that was developed with its own money?
So we've already done one impact test with Lunar Prospector and plan to do a higher energy test with LCROSS and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (in fact there's a./ article a bit further down the front page right now). But the question of water on the moon has been an open one for quite some time, with no definitive answer. The theory is that ice from cometary impacts will have collected at the lunar poles which are permanently dark and cold. The Clementine mission's radar data suggested pockets of ice and Lunar Prospector detected hydrogen concentrations. However, the impact test with LP was negative and a radar survey of the crater walls from Earth with the Arecibo Observatory suggests that what Clementine saw was rocks, not ice. This is somewhat controversial and I suspect will not be resolved until we send a rover in.
Besides, with a rover you can accurately map and sample a large number of sites without potentially blowing a lot of what you're looking for into space.
First, the proposed mission is not spec'd to drive down into the crater, which is likely to have very steep walls covered in loose soil. That descent would be very risky, and so I believe the current mission concept is to land inside the crater, which is permanently dark and cold at about -170 C. Even if you could drive down into the crater, the issues of the mass and reliability of a tether on the order of 10km (Shackleton is 19km wide and 1km deep) are definite problems.
The reason CMU got this funding is primarily due to the fact that we built Crusher (I'm a grad student at the Robotics Institute), for which some of this funding is directed to upgrade. Crusher is, hands-down, the biggest beast of a robot I've ever seen. It's a six wheeled, 6.5 ton, autonomous vehicle - this thing can drive up 4 foot (1.2 meter) steps, has 30 inches (76 cm) of suspension travel, and can carry 8000 lbs of payload. There isn't much that this thing can't handle.
The quote in the original post is a little misleading - I don't really think NREC is going to be working on mounting weapons on the new vehicle. Primarily they're continuing development on autonomous mobility - can it properly plan and quickly execute a good route to get from point A to point B over rough terrain. Check out the CMU press release for a little more detail on the grant.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think some people posting here understand that video-based detection, the subject of this paper, is not the current object detection modality for Google's autonomous vehicles. Those primarily use LiDAR to detect people, cyclist, vehicles, and other objects. It is much easier and much more reliable to detect objects with LiDAR compared to video-based detection as you get a nice cluster of 3D points without having to worry about whether the sun is out or even in light fog or dusty conditions.
I believe Google would certainly like to use video more, as cameras are cheaper than LiDAR, but there's still a ways to go before video/image-based techniques will be as reliable as LiDAR.
What the heck, Slashdot? Can't you link to the actual blog rather to a summary of the blog post? I know no one actually RTFAs, but still!
Link
TFA sucks in sooo many ways. Just go directly to the source. It's much more informative.
Red Whittaker founded Astrobotic Technology - I don't know why this "article" is written as if he's joining the company. And the company does have long-term aspirations for the moon and the Google X Prize allows it to offset the cost of development, assuming they win, of course.
Then the article goes on to say that the "only remaining problem" is handling very low temperatures - while I'm sure it's definitely a problem, I highly doubt that that's the only thing left to be solved.
Bottom Line: Ignore TFA, just read the Astrobotic blog entry.
Minor disclaimer: Dr. Whittaker was my master's thesis advisor.
It's all about build cost. Mounting the chip at 90 degrees means a separate PCB, mounting connectors, and physical space. All things that drive up the cost of the device.
There have been earlier dual axis gyros. In fact, Invensense released some years ago. What's new here is that this measures pitch and yaw (X/Z rotation) rather than the pitch and roll (X/Y rotation) that earlier dual axis gyros measured.
Actually, no. This is the IXZ-500/650 that they are talking about, which measures pitch and yaw (rotations about the X and Z axes). The IDG-600 which you link to is the older gyro which measures pitch and roll (rotations about the X/Z) axes.
And as far as getting 3-axes goes, pairing one of Invensense's X/Y dual axis gyros with their single axis Z gyro would give you that in a single plane.
For those saying this is the part in the MotionPlus, it's not. That's using the IDG-600 which the parent talks about.
As the article mentions, this is for apps where you only want pitch/yaw and don't care about roll, as in a typical remote control application where you're waving up/down and left/right.
Is that a joke? Because I'm fairly sure you can't actually see the magnetic states on the media with an optical scanner...
The spelling is painful, certainly, but some of the word choices are particularly terrible as well:
Emphasis mine, of course.
The summary is incorrect - Weston was not offered $80 million for the design, NASA simply wanted to use their design for an $80 million dollar mission.
From TFA:
Which makes far more sense - why would NASA pay money for a design that was developed with its own money?Here's the paper itself, if you want more detail than the very general summary in TFA.
Nope, according to Wiki, about half a million craters on the moon have diameters of 1km or more, with the largest being 2240km across.
So we've already done one impact test with Lunar Prospector and plan to do a higher energy test with LCROSS and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (in fact there's a ./ article a bit further down the front page right now). But the question of water on the moon has been an open one for quite some time, with no definitive answer. The theory is that ice from cometary impacts will have collected at the lunar poles which are permanently dark and cold. The Clementine mission's radar data suggested pockets of ice and Lunar Prospector detected hydrogen concentrations. However, the impact test with LP was negative and a radar survey of the crater walls from Earth with the Arecibo Observatory suggests that what Clementine saw was rocks, not ice. This is somewhat controversial and I suspect will not be resolved until we send a rover in.
Besides, with a rover you can accurately map and sample a large number of sites without potentially blowing a lot of what you're looking for into space.
First, the proposed mission is not spec'd to drive down into the crater, which is likely to have very steep walls covered in loose soil. That descent would be very risky, and so I believe the current mission concept is to land inside the crater, which is permanently dark and cold at about -170 C. Even if you could drive down into the crater, the issues of the mass and reliability of a tether on the order of 10km (Shackleton is 19km wide and 1km deep) are definite problems.
The reason CMU got this funding is primarily due to the fact that we built Crusher (I'm a grad student at the Robotics Institute), for which some of this funding is directed to upgrade. Crusher is, hands-down, the biggest beast of a robot I've ever seen. It's a six wheeled, 6.5 ton, autonomous vehicle - this thing can drive up 4 foot (1.2 meter) steps, has 30 inches (76 cm) of suspension travel, and can carry 8000 lbs of payload. There isn't much that this thing can't handle.
If you have never seen Crusher in action, you've got to see it to believe it. There's a bunch of videos here: http://www.rec.ri.cmu.edu/projects/crusher/videos/index.htm.
The quote in the original post is a little misleading - I don't really think NREC is going to be working on mounting weapons on the new vehicle. Primarily they're continuing development on autonomous mobility - can it properly plan and quickly execute a good route to get from point A to point B over rough terrain. Check out the CMU press release for a little more detail on the grant.