4 ms·

What is the probability of that happening? I know it occurred in a really poor movie[1][2], but I cannot believe this is common enough to warrant the effort.

• pdelbarba 10y ago
  It's basically not going to happen but hitting flotsam in general is a concern in some situations. I used to boat on the Cuyahoga for instance and floating microwaves will fuck you up. Also, detection of floating objects is actually really hard. Waves create a ton of noise and if you google "floating shipping container" you'll see they typically float with a corner sticking up, making them a somewhat inefficient radar reflector (there's a reason the F117 is shaped the way it is).
  • protomyth 10y ago
    I was more thinking sonar. There seems to be quite a few companies selling obstacle avoidance sonar that have some pretty cool displays.
    • pdelbarba 10y ago
      Sonar doesn't typically work very well looking forward near the surface. For larger craft the transducer could be mounted low enough to look up slightly but even then you have surface interference issues. A container might be a big and deep enough target to pick up on something mounted to the bottom of a sailboat keel perhaps but definitely not the bow. From a signals perspective, things that live right on the edge of the water/air boundary are kind of a pain to detect. Unless the water is perfectly still, there's so much noise that you need a lot of spatial resolution to actually see anything useful