At the University of Michigan on Wednesday, researchers for Darpa announced they’d created a very small chip containing a timing and inertial measurement unit, or TIMU, that’s as thick as a couple human hairs. When the satellites we rely on for navigation can’t be reached — whether they’ve been jammed or you’re in a densely packed city — the chip contains everything you’ll need to figure out how to get from place to place. It’s got gyroscopes, accelerometers and a master clock, to calculate orientation, acceleration and time.
Read complete article at: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/04/darpa-navigation/
Comments
Here's what I don't understand. This thing sounds a lot like an Invensense MPU-9150 chip and I know you can't use this to measure changes in position with any accuracy. Noise seems to be an inherent limitation to IMUs. Give me centimeter accuracy at better than 5 Hz
Indoors, caves, etc...
Its going to open new era in the field of manned & unmanned aerial vehicles !
As this is pretty much the heart of what we have in the APM or PX4, I guess the significant issue is have they increased resolution and stability a lot, basically can they maintain accurate position assessment for an importantly longer period of time.
It has always been theoretically possible to do this, it has just been that implementation was severely lacking.
Ahh yes this tech was talked about for smart phones. So that the GPS can lock on you once, then the TIMU can take it from there. This will be extremely useful for UAVs.
Thanks for sharing this. If this thing becomes cheap/widely available it will be revolutionary in the Micro Robotics/UAS world! :D