Ask Dr. Ramsey Faragher About Navigation/Positioning Technology 104
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samzenpus
from the where-in-the-world dept.
from the where-in-the-world dept.
Dr. Ramsey Faragher graduated from the University of Cambridge in 2004 with a first-class degree in Experimental and Theoretical Physics. He then completed a PhD in 2007 at Cambridge in Opportunistic Radio Positioning under the direction of Dr. Peter Duffett-Smith, a world expert in this field. He is now a Principal Scientist at the BAE Systems Advanced Technology Centre specializing in positioning, navigation, sensor fusion and remote sensing technologies in the land, air, sea and space domains. We recently covered his NAVSOP project, an advanced positioning system that exploits existing transmissions such as Wi-Fi, TV, radio and mobile phone signals, to calculate the user’s location to within a few meters. Dr. Faragher has graciously agreed to answer any questions you may have about NAVSOP, the future of GPS, or what a theoretical physicist puts on his business card. Ask as many questions as you like, but please confine your questions to one per post.
Most Surprising Correction? (Score:5, Interesting)
Indoor Positioning System (Score:4, Interesting)
In-Building and Underground GPS (Score:5, Interesting)
Privacy (Score:5, Interesting)
It would seem that to use this technology, the client would need to have a much larger datastore than with GPS: Whereas only the positions of the GPS satellites need to be known to make a calculation, the dataset here is in the many thousands to millions. In addition to the data required for map storage, it would seem any implimentation of this would require an internet connection to download the data in a geographically-restricted fashion. This opens the door to privacy issues that standalone GPS clients do not have.
How do you plan on addressing the privacy issue with your product?
Precise Positioning in Deep Space? (Score:5, Interesting)
Computers using Traditional Navigation? (Score:4, Interesting)
I found it striking that in the case of the drone that was forced down in Iran (e.g.) the 'return to base' failsafe seemed to be completely dependent on electronic signals.
It would seem much harder to spoof the position of the sun, the Earth's magnetic field, the position of the stars, etc. I presume, perhaps naively, that the sensors and algorithms to do this wouldn't be all that expensive or complex. What's the challenge in getting computers to use traditional navigation techniques?