I was working on the Air Traffic Control side of unmanned free balloons in 2020, and Loon was an exciting project. While it's a shame it wasn't financially viable, they had it working with up to 60-ish balloons in the stratosphere at any given time. This was an amazing accomplishment.
The navigation was equally amazing. It was Loon who did some real research on stratospheric weather. While many meteorological entities throughout the world knew and understood tropospheric weather, the stratosphere was mostly unknown. In addition to AI, Google really did expand the knowledge and science of stratospheric weather.
I thought this project was pretty impressive. I feel like this is a thing that is going to come back around once costs come down and a killer app is found for it.
Yeah I don't buy the baseline comparison of the "expert designed controller" that cannot stay within bounds.
We can control systems that have not only fluid-mechanical, but also heat transfer and chemical reactions, all happening at the same time with huge bars of uncertainty.
Between prevailing winds, power and superpressure limitations, etc., it is often the case that a balloon cannot be regulated within bounds regardless of the quality of controller. Nonetheless I’m certain there are better control laws than this solution.
mathogre|3 years ago
I was working on the Air Traffic Control side of unmanned free balloons in 2020, and Loon was an exciting project. While it's a shame it wasn't financially viable, they had it working with up to 60-ish balloons in the stratosphere at any given time. This was an amazing accomplishment.
The navigation was equally amazing. It was Loon who did some real research on stratospheric weather. While many meteorological entities throughout the world knew and understood tropospheric weather, the stratosphere was mostly unknown. In addition to AI, Google really did expand the knowledge and science of stratospheric weather.
bluetwo|3 years ago
whatever1|3 years ago
We can control systems that have not only fluid-mechanical, but also heat transfer and chemical reactions, all happening at the same time with huge bars of uncertainty.
Next.
krisoft|3 years ago
The baseline comparison is not meant to be some final word on any given controller. In this case they clearly cite it to a particular paper. [1]
1: https://github.com/google/balloon-learning-environment/blob/...
scandido|3 years ago