MoD’s ‘quantum compass’ offers potential to replace GPS

[Fred_C_Dobbs]

Thought you guys might be interested in this article. Hopefully I inserted the link correctly, this is my first post.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4cac5a24-db68-11e3-94ad-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz31oo5OEED

Some interesting quotes from the article:

Scientists at Porton Down and the National Physical Laboratory believe they are three to five years away from developing a “quantum compass” that would be able to locate itself based on the subatomic effects of the earth’s magnetic field.

Without regular fixes, even the most sophisticated navigational systems can produce inaccuracies that amount to as much as 1km a day.

 

[UrAwFuL]

That last quote sounds like the mother cause of flyaways. :shock:

 

[Fred_C_Dobbs]

This link might work better, the first one is forcing you to 'register'.

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/4cac5a24-db68-11e3-94ad-00144feabdc0.html#axzz31orZhXOq

 

[Fred_C_Dobbs]

Well crud, that one does the same thing. If you want to read the article you can 'register' using a temporary email address (10 minute email, yopmail, etc.).

Or if needed I can just cut and paste the entire article.

 

[N017RW]

That last quote sounds like the mother cause of flyaways. :shock:

C'mon, seriously?

Worst case, using the values cited, a 25 min. flight, and linear progression,there would be 17m or ~57ft of accumulated 'innacuracy'.

 

[dkatz42]

Too much trouble to read the article, so I may be all wet, but it seems as though they're talking about improving inertial navigation with this, as GPS doesn't accumulate errors in this way. If you're tooling along in a submarine, for example, you get a position fix and then try to keep track of where you are by basing it on where you were and how you've been moving since, and this scheme will quickly accumulate error. But with GPS you're getting a fresh fix every second or faster (my full-scale airplane does five fixes per second, I think) so this presumably doesn't apply.

 

[ElGuano]

Too much trouble to read the article, so I may be all wet, but it seems as though they're talking about improving inertial navigation with this, as GPS doesn't accumulate errors in this way. If you're tooling along in a submarine, for example, you get a position fix and then try to keep track of where you are by basing it on where you were and how you've been moving since, and this scheme will quickly accumulate error. But with GPS you're getting a fresh fix every second or faster (my full-scale airplane does five fixes per second, I think) so this presumably doesn't apply.

I don't get that sense from the synopsis (also didn't get through the reg-wall). It sounds like they're using a magnetometer-like device that is sensitive enough to detect and differentiate the unique magnetic field of any given region. So they would be need a pretty big lookup table, but it would be an absolute position and not relative from start point.

The "accumulation of errors" quote seems to be describing existing inertial navigation, not this method.

 

[dkatz42]

The "accumulation of errors" quote seems to be describing existing inertial navigation, not this method.

Yes, this was my take as well, sorry for not being clear.