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Royal Navy says quantum navigation test a success
- cryptonector 3y agoHmmm, a better inertial guidance system sounds awesome. But... why is this not a state secret?
- nickt 3y agoThe quoted Sky News article has a (tiny bit) more info. https://news.sky.com/story/royal-navys-experimental-ship-carries-out-first-trial-of-quantum-navigation-system-12889487#:~:text=What%20is%20quantum%20navigation%3F,the%20world%20without%20using%20GPS https://news.sky.com/story/royal-navys-experimental-ship-car...
- davidkellis 3y agoSounds like inertial navigation to me.
- CoastalCoder 3y agoWell, yes and no.
- bratbag 3y agoHa!
- mach1ne 3y agoThe headline feels like from an alternate 1940s timeline.
- mmastrac 3y agoYou know exactly where you are but you can't figure out how fast you're going. (I'm sorry) But seriously, this article is light on details. Is this just fancy dead-reckoning?
- andromeduck 3y ago99% sure this is for mapping the seafloor and preforming localization based on that like pre-gps cruise missles missles did with downward facing radar. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TERCOM https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TERCOM
- contingencies 3y ago[flagged]
- was_a_dev 3y ago> But seriously, this article is light on details I'd expect it to be light on details. It is a project funded by the Royal Navy for next-generation navigation. Thye don't really want to give away details other than, "we have this" A recent TV news report covered this in the UK. The only thing they could show was an prototype in a lab setting and a sealed white box on the test platform boat.
- Animats 3y agoIs there any info on this from a reliable source? No idea what "quantum" means here. Remote entanglement? Some new kind of gyro? There's something called a "quantum gyroscope".[1] Those exist as lab devices. One good enough for a submarine seems not too big a jump. [1] https://physics.aps.org/articles/v8/11 https://physics.aps.org/articles/v8/11
- wging 3y agoThe article links to a better article, https://news.sky.com/story/royal-navys-experimental-ship-carries-out-first-trial-of-quantum-navigation-system-12889487 https://news.sky.com/story/royal-navys-experimental-ship-car..., which calls the device an accelerometer. I think the article linked here got literally all its information from that other article. Apparently it's a small number of rubidium atoms, cooled to near-absolute zero, under which conditions they can apparently measure gravitational effects and make deductions from that ("measure extremely accurately the influence of gravity on their system, which in turn allows them to measure the speed and direction of its movement").
- readyplayernull 3y ago》measure gravitational effects and make deductions from that ("measure extremely accurately the influence of gravity on their system Aha! So it might be able to detect other submarines, even if they use some stealth tech.
- rz2k 3y agoThat sounds absurd, but the $5 pressure sensor on my weather station could detect a volcanic explosion 5,000 miles away. Is there even a difference between a submarine and the surrounding water's gravitational fields when the sub has neutral buoyancy?
- Out_of_Characte 3y agoThere probaly would be, the displacement might be the same but the distribution of mass wouldn't. But I recon these instruments are only sensitive enough to measure the difference between the seafloor and the water above.
- siraben 3y agoThe cover image certainly looks AI-generated. The rods on the top of the submarine seem oddly positioned.
- jmount 3y agoSame government that buys dowsing rods for de-mining.
- jchallis 3y agoThis is the most obvious practical application of my PhD topic. A Bose Einstein Condensate is an extremely sensitive detector of gravity- a nuclear submarine could use it to make an ultra-accurate map of the world based on variations in the gravitational constant g. This would remove one of the primary reasons subs need to surface , in order to GPS lock. It’s a naval chart that would not require surfacing. A French postdoc in my lab swore this was the moneymaker for our entire subfield, and it seems he was on to something …
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- themodelplumber 3y agoFascinating. Q for you since you are so clued in. I am a ham radio operator and was thinking about novel forms of signal propagation. I landed on the idea of gravitons. Could gravitonic signal propagation be done somehow? While researching, I keep coming across familiar terms I know from radio land. Just curious if the fields here could be harnessed for communication. Thanks.
- HyperSane 3y agoGravity waves are way too hard to detect and generate to be used for communication. The waves we can just barely detect too 8 solar masses worth of energy to generate.
- multjoy 3y agoAnd people complained about next door's aerial farm!
- dumpsterdiver 3y ago[flagged]
- sph 3y ago> any stable solar system capable of sustaining life will emit a steady heartbeat, just like a living being What do you mean? What would be the source of the regular wave-like signal, and why only systems with life have one? Do you mean that actual hearts beating create gravitational waves?
- kebman 3y agoA friend of mine got PTSD from piloting huge nuclear subs in subsea ravines with a clearing of only one inch on each side of the sub. One wrong move, and the entire crew is gone. He also had to do this in conditions similar to surface storms. Looks like autonomous or automatic systems may be developed for those kinds of manoeuvres now, if it is truly that precise. Seems like a huge leap in navigational systems.
- HyperSane 3y agoThere is no way that subs can be controlled accurately enough to do that.
- bottom999mottob 3y agoThere is no way anyone would hyperbolize the experience of their friend squeezing a submarine through ravines on the internet.
- UberFly 3y agoSqueezing submarines through internet ravines sounds really interesting. Go on.
- reportgunner 3y agoIs there a library for this ?
- yodon 3y agoWhen a storyteller has clearly hyperbolized the parts of their story that can be fact checked, they have destroyed any reason to believe the remainder of their words.
- verisimi 3y agoAn inch! He was lucky! My friend was only given half an inch, and that was considered generous!
- rocqua 3y agoI'm surprised we don't see more military research for SAT-NAV alternatives. In any big conflict SAT-NAV is trivial to turn off. If you can still position yourself and your enemy can't, that is an enormous advantage in targeting, logistics, coordination, and situational awareness. Seems like a no-brainer.
- HyperSane 3y agoThe US military is working on a device that can use stars to determine location even during the day.
- buildbot 3y agoCouldn’t that be just celestial navigation with a very specific notch filter for starlight wavelengths? So you can see stars in daylight?
- K0balt 3y agoBasically, ultra high dynamic range.
- mnw21cam 3y agoStars are broadband light sources, there isn't a specific starlight wavelength. Likewise, the Raleigh scattering in the atmosphere is largely a broadband source of light, since it is a reflection of our sun's light. You might get some slight benefit by looking at the redder end of the spectrum, but the improvement won't be massive. However, stars are (to the nearest approximation) point sources. If you use a telescope and zoom in to the star, then you can spread the atmosphere brightness over a large area while concentrating the starlight into a very small area, which means you can see stars during the day. Couple that with a reasonable level of high dynamic range sensor and integration over time, and it would be quite possible to observe the positions of a load of stars during the day.
- tivert 3y ago> The US military is working on a device that can use stars to determine location even during the day. They already developed a device that could do that in the 60s, but it was quite large: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_SR-71_Blackbird#Astro-inertial_navigation_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_SR-71_Blackbird#Astro... https://timeandnavigation.si.edu/multimedia-asset/nortronics-nas-14v2-astroinertial-navigation-system https://timeandnavigation.si.edu/multimedia-asset/nortronics... Do you have a source for the one you say they're working on? Is more portable or hand-held?
- andromeduck 3y agoLooks like what's happening is they've found a way to use BSEs [1] to measure small variations in the earth's gravity caused by undersea terrain, probably so that they can then use existing satelite measured data [2], to recover absolute position via Terrain Contour Matching [3] like a gulf war tomahawk missle. Edit: Seems like there's another company that's doing the same thing [4] with BSEs [5]. [1] https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/570707/why-is-rubidium-87-used-for-bose-einstein-condensates https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/570707/why-is-ru... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TERCOM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TERCOM [3] https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/87189/seafloor-features-are-revealed-by-the-gravity-field https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/87189/seafloor-feat... [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZiUfw6ftq4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZiUfw6ftq4 [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7Y7MikUS4M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7Y7MikUS4M
- layer8 3y agoWhat does BSE stand for? Your link doesn’t mention it.
- andromeduck 3y agoAhh brain fart, supposed to be BECs https://www.livescience.com/54667-bose-einstein-condensate.html https://www.livescience.com/54667-bose-einstein-condensate.h...
- aaron695 3y ago> measure small variations in the earth's gravity This would be incorrect. It is just a very accurate, unproven in the field, accelerometer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwKKOPd-5cU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwKKOPd-5cU - "Royal Navy's experimental ship carries out first trial of quantum navigation system" "The quantum accelerometer uses ultracold atoms to make highly accurate measurements. When cooled to extremely low temperatures the atoms start to display their ‘quantum’ nature, resulting in wave-like properties. As the atoms move through the sensor, an ‘optical ruler’ is formed by using a series of laser pulses. This allows the acceleration of the atoms to be precisely measured."
- gnfargbl 3y agoThe Imperial College researcher who builds these things describes his research here: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/centre-for-cold-matter/research/quantum-navigation/ https://www.imperial.ac.uk/centre-for-cold-matter/research/q... The page claims that this device attempts to measure acceleration accurately enough that position can be determined (by integrating over time, twice).
- anovikov 3y agoSo just a more precise dead reckoning? But it has a square law of precision so can never work for long enough anyway.
- jackdh 3y agoIt's off topic however on the people page[0] of the above link, I enjoyed going through to try and spot the photoshopped in ones! [0]https://www.imperial.ac.uk/centre-for-cold-matter/people/ https://www.imperial.ac.uk/centre-for-cold-matter/people/
- andyjohnson0 3y agoI'm not a physicist but this reads like a more sensitive type of inertial navigation, which currently uses gyroscopes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_navigation_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_navigation_system
- 1letterunixname 3y ago
- dlahoda 3y agoWww.
- tomas789 3y agoAs mentioned here [1] they use atom interferometry to build extremely precise sensors of acceleration and rotation. This is everything needed to build an inertial navigation system (INS). This is completely independent of any external system. My guess is that this is what makes is so interesting for subs. Probably the biggest issue with INSs is accuracy of the raw IMU measurements. The acceleration must be integrated twice. That means any error in the measurement gets exponentially larger with time. Rotation velocity measurements are integrated only once (some IMUs measure absolute orientation but it is not the case here) so the error does not explode as fast. Is is the combination with translation that is problematic. If you rotate around vertical axis by 90deg +/- 1% and then travel for 1000km +/- 1% the rotation accuracy will cause bigger error in final location. To have an INS capable of long time operation without any other means of drift correction one has to nail many other things. - Gravitational constant varies and you have to have an accurate map of it. We might not have a good enough one. I don't know. The subs could collect their measurements and perform a large scale optimization to increase the accuracy of this map. - The rotation of earth gets added to the rotation speed measurements. The rotation is not constant (hence the leap seconds from now and then). We have to be able to extrapolate it well enough. - Sampling rate of the quantum IMU has to be high enough. How usefull is the most precise measurement if you can measure only once in 10 minutes? Traditional IMUs sample at 1 kHz and more. - Does the new quantum gyroscope add enough value to the accuracy of the final IMU compared to Fibre-optic gyroscopes? They are incredibly accurate as they are based on laser interferometry and then can sample at high frequency. Plus they are an established technology which partially benefits from economy of scale [5] because they are used in airplanes [6]. - The measurements of both rotation velocity and acceleration have to be measured in 3 axes. Are the relative orientations and translations of those axes stable enough as the device moves? - Is the noise present in the measurements corelated to something or is it truly random? The corelation could mean an systematic error to the state estimate. - You will likely also have to have an atomic clock on board labeling each IMU measurement as soon as it is made. But this is not a problem nowadays as one can have a small Rubidium-based atomic clock in a package starting to resemble a chip [2] [3] [4]. - And of course you will need enough computing power to calculate everything. I'm not sure how modern hardware they are allowed on board of nuclear-carrying subs. This is slight problem for things like Mars rover as due to the testing requirements the main chip can be easily 30 years old when the rocket is launched [7]. Also, the situation is not as bad as we can utilize the sensor fusion and correct lots of errors caused by IMU measurements. From the top of my head one can obviously measure water pressure which estimates depth (with some error). Sea bed topology could be other type of measurement but my guess is that this measurement is too crude compared to the accuracy of the quantum-based INS. [1] https://www.imperial.ac.uk/centre-for-cold-matter/research/quantum-navigation/ https://www.imperial.ac.uk/centre-for-cold-matter/research/q... [2] https://eu.mouser.com/new/microchip/microchip-macsa5x-atomic-clock/ https://eu.mouser.com/new/microchip/microchip-macsa5x-atomic... [3] https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14830 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14830 [4] https://www.accubeat.com/nano-atomic-clock https://www.accubeat.com/nano-atomic-clock [5] https://emcore.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/EMCORE-Commercial-Pricing-for-FOG-Components.pdf https://emcore.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/EMCORE-Commerc... [6] https://www.airbus.com/en/products-services/space/equipment/avionics/astrix-inertial-measurement-iru-series https://www.airbus.com/en/products-services/space/equipment/... [7] https://bigthink.com/hard-science/perseverance-rover-brain/ https://bigthink.com/hard-science/perseverance-rover-brain/
- neonate 3y agohttps://archive.ph/vaIlJ https://archive.ph/vaIlJ http://web.archive.org/web/20230607080527/https://thequantuminsider.com/2023/06/06/royal-navy-says-quantum-navigation-test-a-success/ http://web.archive.org/web/20230607080527/https://thequantum...
- DarkmSparks 3y agoprobably the arxiv article its based on back from 2019 https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.06198 https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.06198
- davidgerard 3y agoReblog of https://news.sky.com/story/royal-navys-experimental-ship-carries-out-first-trial-of-quantum-navigation-system-12889487 https://news.sky.com/story/royal-navys-experimental-ship-car...
- wslh 3y agoHobby and business wise: is it difficult to build this thing? Someone could explain what a startup need to do something similar?
- yodon 3y ago> Is it difficult to build this thing? Yes. > What would a startup need to make this work as a business? Extensive contacts in the submarine navigation ecosystem and several decades of deep knowledge of highly complex, highly classified, related navigation systems that this product would need to interoperate with. This tech is not a magic locator machine on its own, it's a component that improves one small but important part of a very large and complex locator system and locator ecosystem. If the startup has that sort of contact list and experience, it's probably not a startup, it is most likely a division of one of a very small number of very large defense contractors. (And for those who might argue it's not just for submarines, if the startup has the relevant contacts in the submarine navigation ecosystem, it probably also has the relevant contacts in the other equally classified navigation ecosystems like for cruise missiles and etc., and the technicals aspects of this particular part of the problem domain will probably be relevant across other platform types, even if the details of submarine vs cruise missile inertial navigation platforms are different.)
- wslh 3y agoThank you, two more questions: do we expect that other governments in the world will build a similar system soon? and/or how many years of advantage does the Royal Navy have?
- WastingMyTime89 3y agoNobody knows what the Royal Navy actually has. Nobody knows what other governments have. You are in the realm of what are the actual capabilities of nuclear weapons carrying subs. You can safely assume than anything remotely interesting is classified.
- avidphantasm 3y agoThis sounds like fancy next-gen inertial navigation. You’ll still need charts (and ENCs) and still need GPS (for periodic updates to the inertially derived position).
- vesinisa 3y agoInertial navigation is a form of dead reckoning. It needs periodic updates (GPS fixes) to stay accurate. If this however works like some other commenters have theorized (by finding reliable matches to the known contour of the bottom of the ocean), it's not a form of dead reckoning and can instead be used as a fix for dead reckoning.
- avidphantasm 3y agoI don’t know how that would work. Most of the ocean (ca. 75% is unmapped) and is constantly changing.
- wolverine876 3y agoPossibly, military submarines are interested in only a small part of the ocean. The Strait of Hormuz probably is well-mapped; some spot in the middle of the Indian Ocean might be unneeded.
- Angostura 3y agoOriginal source and more detail here: https://news.sky.com/story/royal-navys-experimental-ship-carries-out-first-trial-of-quantum-navigation-system-12889487 https://news.sky.com/story/royal-navys-experimental-ship-car...
- politician 3y ago"The XV Patrick Blackett, the Navy’s new experimental vessel, provided the setting for the experiment. Sky News said the ship makes a perfect host for the futuristic experiment — it boasts a sleek design, featuring tinted windows and a glossy black hull." Aesthetics are key for quantum navigation /s
- mpnordland 3y agoWhat's the point of knowing where you are if you don't look cool while you're there? /s On the other hand, I do appreciate the efficiency of serving the PR mission and the testing mission with the same boat.
- mikewarot 3y agoAn update to an existing idea[1], with lower noise. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_gradiometry# https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_gradiometry#
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- PicassoCTs 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibre-optic_gyroscope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibre-optic_gyroscope ?
- Fervicus 3y agoCan you ELI5 how this works?
- jimnotgym 3y agoGood news for the US Navy too, since they will get this research for free as part of the tribute the UK pays for US protection
- ThinkBeat 3y agoI have two somewhat related questions: Can a submerged military submarine let divers "out", and / or divers "in"? Do they have air locks / water locks? It would seem possible, enormously dependent on the depth of the submarine. Not just from the perspective of the integrity of the giant uboat but also the integrity of divers. In movies (which are always "accurate") they put people into torpedo tubes. Which I believe do feature some form of an air locks and ports to open and close. Not sure a person would fit, or if it is physically possible given the operation of the tube. If possible, can they enter the same way? My second question is if you can do deep sea fishing? (while submerged) Have fresh as can be sushi? I figure if you can let a person in and out, that person could go hunt fish and bring it back. They dont have windows but from sonar does pick up some sea creatures. You could possibly have a harpoon with a sensor on it you could extend to catch fish. It just seems it ought to be possible. With a nuclear submarine, I think, one of the limits to how long you can operate before requiring supplies is food. I hope a nuclear submarine has a way to creating fresh water from salt water as benefit for having a reactor. at least.
- yencabulator 3y agoStandard practice for 40+ years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEAL_Delivery_Vehicle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEAL_Delivery_Vehicle
- TechBro8615 3y agoDo we know if any animals navigate this way, or is that generally limited to following the magnetic field of the Earth?
- EricE 3y agoGood for them. Navigation relying solely on GPS always struck me as extremely stupid for the very reasons mentioned in the article.