Preparation of upcoming "Dancing in the dark" lecture (... bits and pieces on inertial navigation, soldering, life and everything else)

While working on a lecture for upcoming BalCCon2k18 I had some time to reflect on MEMS (MicroElectroMechanical Systems) history and how it's becoming ever-present and ever-cheaper. Besides that we were having an awful lot of fun trying to prepare a small something for people attending this lecture. And there is of course Bruce Springsteen. Random rumble on things that came to my mind about this :)

Why not dancing in the rain, or dancing with myself?

There is this analogy I love using that GPS is basically like using sight and navigating in relation to objects you can see (stars, treeline, buildings, ...). With inertial navigation it something closer like inspecting horizon once and memorizing it before shutting your eyes and heading towards your destination with nothing but your inner ear and whole lot of guts to help you on your way. Honestly I'm not even too much of a fan of that song, but dancing in the dark pun works best for me. Call me romantic.

With Soldering iron in hand

There is a saying, that in embedded danger comes in two major flavors: hardware engineer coding and software engineer taking on a soldering iron. I do believe however that some renaissance approach is in place. For an embedded tinkerer there is nothing sacred and "NO GO" does not exist.

My colleague had an idea to make an awesome badge / badge kit based on ESP-12 module and IMU-9265 as a small gift / token for people attending BalCCon, alas Elder Embedded Gods and malevolent spirits imprinted a fatal flaw in the PCB design thus rendering it unusable. At this point in time there is simply not possible to get a second batch. In my humble opinion PCBs look awesome and could make fantastic key ring.

Understanding the deadly in phrase "deadly precision"

Inertial navigation is simple, impossible to interfere with and compact. This makes it a perfect easy to weponisable dual-use technology for guided missiles. While there are regulations there to set ban on free trafficking of any such goods (namely Missile Technology Control Regime - MTCR & International Traffic in Arms Regulations - ITAR) there are ways of evasion. For any top notch precision there is nothing close Sagnac Effect based devices like Fiber Optic Gyroscope (FOG) a Ring Laser Gyroscope (RLG) easily able to track earth rotation rate. FOGs and RLGs can be typically found inside ADIRU (Air Data Inertial Reference Unit) on civilian aircraft such as Airbus 320 and are a rare commodity always under scrutiny and tracked by vigilant eye of authorities. For comparison purpose ADIRU are main source of aircraft navigation data.

As with life itself, time is the main limiting factor. Drift is exponential function of time with errors accumulating and affecting you in the long run. Please take a moment to appreciate this and going back to "inner ear" metaphor - think what would happen to you navigating blindfolded for prolonged periods of time.

Kudos

My gratitude goes to Ivana, my mentor for providing me with guidance during studies, tactical real-world data, as well some industry grade piece of advise and my friend and colleague Dejan for his effort to make a cool conf badge. My main reference were books by prof. Oleg Salychev which are a must-read for anybody into this particular topic. I appreciate Zuhlke support both in time and resources provided to prepare this lecture. Last, but not the least big thanks to all the poor souls bearing with me when unbearable.

See you on BalCCon :)

EDIT 01: Slides now available on SlideShare.