200
‘It’s the perfect place’: London Underground hosts tests for ‘quantum compass’ that could replace GPS
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2024
200 points (98.5% liked)
Technology
59429 readers
2815 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It will definitely require corrections from GPS or other systems, but if made sufficiently accurate; it could be months or even years before the accumulated errors necessitate a correction.
What seems more concerning to me is a system like this would require 100% up time between outside corrections.
A gps receiver can acquire its position from a completely powered off state. Inertial guidence though, needs to be told its current position; then it can keep track of where it goes from there. If there's any hiccup with power, you've completely lost your location fix and can't reacquire it alone.
Put the two together though, and the inertial guidence can accurately fill in the gaps between gps service while also getting regular updates/corrections when you do have that signal available.
I don't think you'll ever see an INS going months without needing a correction. Imperfect gravitational compensation applies directly to the specific force measurements and those errors are then accumulated twice.