Activity Spotlight

From Self-driving Cars to Missile Defense: How Kalman Filters Predict the Uncertain

How would you track an incoming asteroid? If you can spot it with telescopes, you'll have a rough idea of where it is. But no equipment has perfect accuracy, and besides, what you really want to know is where it's going to be, not just where it is right now. If you can predict that, you might be able to intercept it and divert its course! That's a tall order, but Kalman Filters are designed to handle problems just like that. They are used every day around us--from self driving cars to IoT data analysis. We'll look at a few of these use-cases, exploring how Kalman Filters work and why they're so helpful. A Raspberry Pi will power our live demo: a small model of the earth is threatened with an incoming asteroid--can a cheap ultrasonic sensor track it quickly and accurately enough for the defense satellite (servo powered rubber band shooter) to blast it out of the sky? With a Kalman Filter powering our asteroid tracking, Earth may yet be saved!