I don't think some people posting here understand that video-based detection, the subject of this paper, is not the current object detection modality for Google's autonomous vehicles. Those primarily use LiDAR to detect people, cyclist, vehicles, and other objects. It is much easier and much more reliable to detect objects with LiDAR compared to video-based detection as you get a nice cluster of 3D points without having to worry about whether the sun is out or even in light fog or dusty conditions.

I believe Google would certainly like to use video more, as cameras are cheaper than LiDAR, but there's still a ways to go before video/image-based techniques will be as reliable as LiDAR.

What the heck, Slashdot? Can't you link to the actual blog rather to a summary of the blog post? I know no one actually RTFAs, but still!

Link

NASA already has a major headache every time it wants to launch an RTG (radioisotope thermal generation) powered vehicle. The outcry is typically, "Oh no! What if the thing explodes on launch and spreads radioactive material all over the place!"

You think they could ever get clearance to launch nuclear explosives?!?

TFA sucks in sooo many ways. Just go directly to the source. It's much more informative.

Red Whittaker founded Astrobotic Technology - I don't know why this "article" is written as if he's joining the company. And the company does have long-term aspirations for the moon and the Google X Prize allows it to offset the cost of development, assuming they win, of course.

Then the article goes on to say that the "only remaining problem" is handling very low temperatures - while I'm sure it's definitely a problem, I highly doubt that that's the only thing left to be solved.

Bottom Line: Ignore TFA, just read the Astrobotic blog entry.

Minor disclaimer: Dr. Whittaker was my master's thesis advisor.

It's all about build cost. Mounting the chip at 90 degrees means a separate PCB, mounting connectors, and physical space. All things that drive up the cost of the device.

There have been earlier dual axis gyros. In fact, Invensense released some years ago. What's new here is that this measures pitch and yaw (X/Z rotation) rather than the pitch and roll (X/Y rotation) that earlier dual axis gyros measured.

Actually, no. This is the IXZ-500/650 that they are talking about, which measures pitch and yaw (rotations about the X and Z axes). The IDG-600 which you link to is the older gyro which measures pitch and roll (rotations about the X/Z) axes.

And as far as getting 3-axes goes, pairing one of Invensense's X/Y dual axis gyros with their single axis Z gyro would give you that in a single plane.

For those saying this is the part in the MotionPlus, it's not. That's using the IDG-600 which the parent talks about.

As the article mentions, this is for apps where you only want pitch/yaw and don't care about roll, as in a typical remote control application where you're waving up/down and left/right.

Is that a joke? Because I'm fairly sure you can't actually see the magnetic states on the media with an optical scanner...