Isn’t navigating without a person complex and expensive?
Seems like an obvious question.
It may be complex, but it it’s no longer expensive :-)
When I was a boy, my uncle worked for Lockheed and loved
airplanes. He took me to a remote control airplane show and we watched a model
B-36
take
off and fly. Today this B-36
remote control plane shows 50 years of technology advances, but the concept
is the same.
These hobbyists have been working on these models, and today
you can buy model planes and even helicopter “drones” that essentially fly
themselves. You can buy them as kits or pre-assembled.
What about the technology that makes this possible, and
inexpensive?
Think about what an iPhone processor does, with GPS,
accelerometers, and a high-resolution camera. Think about the user interface, you
see graphics, you touch it for input, and even talk to it. Think about the
battery keeping all this going for days.
Now apply all this technology to the challenge of
navigation. Chris Anderson in the June 2012 issue Wired Magazine has given some
insight into this world of progress: How I
Accidentally Kickstarted the Domestic Drone Boom. Here’s his description of
how available the navigation technology is:
“Today, all the sensors required to make a functioning
autopilot have become radically smaller and radically cheaper. Gyroscopes,
which measure rates of rotation; magnetometers, which function as digital
compasses; pressure sensors, which measure atmospheric pressure to calculate
altitude; accelerometers, to measure the force of gravity—all the capabilities
of these technologies are now embedded in tiny chips that you can buy at
RadioShack. Indeed, some of the newest sensors combine three-axis
accelerometers, gyros, and magnetometers (nine sensors in all), plus a
temperature gauge and a processor, into one little package that costs about
$17.”
No comments:
Post a Comment