4 ms·

From my comfy armchair, with zero experience in this field, it seems like you could use star tracking to very accurately predict the angle of the sun (since the

From my comfy armchair, with zero experience in this field, it seems like you could use star tracking to very accurately predict the angle of the sun (since the sun is effectively fixed in position relative to the background stars over the timescales you'd care about). Spotting the target is a little harder, but the same measurement could be made by sticking some reflectors in known positions around the target. I'm sure there are tons of considerations that aren't occurring to me (for instance, thermal expansion likely contributes substantially to making it a moving target (literally)), but I really don't see where "AI" comes into it...

smueller1234 7y ago
Many years ago, I implemented star tracking for telescope alignment for auger.org. An actual basic version using libnova et al was pretty straightforward and a matter of days to prototype if I recall correctly (it was a project for a master student, so I had to do most of the work over a longer period of time). I think the accuracy was around a decimal fraction of a degree then. But the cameras of that thing have only 440 1.5° pixels (photomultipliers that sample at 5-20M samples/s). A higher resolution camera could probably do much better assuming you have a very accurate computer model of the optical properties of your telescope/lenses/camera.
dreamcompiler 7y ago
Figuring out the sun's location is the easiest part of the problem. The hard part is that each mirror is a big, floppy slab that moves with wind, temperature, gear backlash, mechanical wear, rain/hail, and ground settling. The so-called "AI" here is really just a clever way to use closed-loop control so that the above factors don't matter much. (Side note: A large amount of "AI" these days just amounts to changing open-loop mechanisms to closed-loop, often by using computer vision as the state sensor. 3D printers, for example could become much more precise with no mechanical improvements if they did this. Probably some have already done so.)

smueller1234 7y ago

Many years ago, I implemented star tracking for telescope alignment for auger.org. An actual basic version using libnova et al was pretty straightforward and a matter of days to prototype if I recall correctly (it was a project for a master student, so I had to do most of the work over a longer period of time). I think the accuracy was around a decimal fraction of a degree then. But the cameras of that thing have only 440 1.5° pixels (photomultipliers that sample at 5-20M samples/s). A higher resolution camera could probably do much better assuming you have a very accurate computer model of the optical properties of your telescope/lenses/camera.

dreamcompiler 7y ago

Figuring out the sun's location is the easiest part of the problem. The hard part is that each mirror is a big, floppy slab that moves with wind, temperature, gear backlash, mechanical wear, rain/hail, and ground settling. The so-called "AI" here is really just a clever way to use closed-loop control so that the above factors don't matter much. (Side note: A large amount of "AI" these days just amounts to changing open-loop mechanisms to closed-loop, often by using computer vision as the state sensor. 3D printers, for example could become much more precise with no mechanical improvements if they did this. Probably some have already done so.)