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Can someone tell me if SpaceX's tail-landing rockets are vision-only systems? Street vehicle navigation seems at least as difficult as nailing a rocket landing

Can someone tell me if SpaceX's tail-landing rockets are vision-only systems? Street vehicle navigation seems at least as difficult as nailing a rocket landing.

agogdog 5y ago
I'd argue that navigating streets is significantly harder than landing a rocket. Space X can land a rocket for example, but fully autonomous cars are still a ways off.
mdorazio 5y ago
They are not. Cameras would not be all that useful. See [1] for an estimated system diagram - the main sensor stacks are based on AHRS and GPS. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/64ew8x/falcon_9_a_systems_overview/ https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/64ew8x/falcon_9_a_s...
shadowgovt 5y ago
It's a bit of an apples-and-oranges comparison regarding "as hard as," but the answer to your question is that the rocket uses a combination of GPS for gross aiming followed by radar for fine-grained approach. Vision might be possible but presents challenges radar may not (including that as the rocket gets close to the pad, the back-blast form the exhaust obscures the pad).
gct 5y ago
Not a chance, at the very least they have a hot shit inertial nav unit if not a full imaging landing radar
valine 5y ago
Humans are proof that's its possible to safely drive a car with pure vision. Pretty sure no human has ever propulsively landed a rocket on earth using nothing but vision.
- moojd 5y ago
  I don't think humans are a good benchmark for what we should expect from FSD.
  - valine 5y ago
    Not in the short term for sure. I've been pretty impressed with the FSD beta videos circulating youtube though. It's better than you would expect for a non-geofenced, vision based self driving system.
    - wearywanderer 5y ago
      Better than I would have expected? I guess we didn't watch the same videos. I expected to see the system repeatedly trying to kill people and that's exactly what I saw in those videos.
      - valine 5y ago
        I guess we haven't seen the same videos. I've watched many hours of FSD beta footage and if anything its excessively cautious. Not saying it never makes dangerous mistakes, but the mistakes I've seen it make seem solvable. For example it has trouble with unprotected left turns when there are trees or fences obscuring the view. That to me is understandable and could probably be fixed with an update to the vision stack, maybe train the object detector on cars partially obscured by trees.
        wearywanderer 5y ago
        From what I saw, it drives worse than an intoxicated teenager on the first week of their learner's permit.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  > Humans are proof that's its possible to safely drive a car with pure vision. Humans also have eyes with a lot more than 1.2 megapixels of equivalent resolution and vastly more dynamic range, attached to a brain with damn near infinite more compute power than any computer.

Can someone tell me if SpaceX's tail-landing rockets are vision-only systems? Street vehicle navigation seems at least as difficult as nailing a rocket landing.

agogdog 5y ago

I'd argue that navigating streets is significantly harder than landing a rocket. Space X can land a rocket for example, but fully autonomous cars are still a ways off.

mdorazio 5y ago

They are not. Cameras would not be all that useful. See [1] for an estimated system diagram - the main sensor stacks are based on AHRS and GPS. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/64ew8x/falcon_9_a_systems_overview/ https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/64ew8x/falcon_9_a_s...

shadowgovt 5y ago

It's a bit of an apples-and-oranges comparison regarding "as hard as," but the answer to your question is that the rocket uses a combination of GPS for gross aiming followed by radar for fine-grained approach. Vision might be possible but presents challenges radar may not (including that as the rocket gets close to the pad, the back-blast form the exhaust obscures the pad).

gct 5y ago

Not a chance, at the very least they have a hot shit inertial nav unit if not a full imaging landing radar

valine 5y ago

Humans are proof that's its possible to safely drive a car with pure vision. Pretty sure no human has ever propulsively landed a rocket on earth using nothing but vision.

moojd 5y ago
I don't think humans are a good benchmark for what we should expect from FSD.
- valine 5y ago
  Not in the short term for sure. I've been pretty impressed with the FSD beta videos circulating youtube though. It's better than you would expect for a non-geofenced, vision based self driving system.
  - wearywanderer 5y ago
    Better than I would have expected? I guess we didn't watch the same videos. I expected to see the system repeatedly trying to kill people and that's exactly what I saw in those videos.
    - valine 5y ago
      I guess we haven't seen the same videos. I've watched many hours of FSD beta footage and if anything its excessively cautious. Not saying it never makes dangerous mistakes, but the mistakes I've seen it make seem solvable. For example it has trouble with unprotected left turns when there are trees or fences obscuring the view. That to me is understandable and could probably be fixed with an update to the vision stack, maybe train the object detector on cars partially obscured by trees.
      - wearywanderer 5y ago
        From what I saw, it drives worse than an intoxicated teenager on the first week of their learner's permit.
rootusrootus 5y ago
> Humans are proof that's its possible to safely drive a car with pure vision. Humans also have eyes with a lot more than 1.2 megapixels of equivalent resolution and vastly more dynamic range, attached to a brain with damn near infinite more compute power than any computer.