Scientists use machine learning algorithms to determine the possible sources of Martian meteorites

The Tooting Crater on Mars is a large and relatively young crater. Mars crater expert Peter Mouginis Mark has identified this landmark and named it Tooting after his birthplace in the suburbs of London. Anthony Lagain, a planetary scientist at Curtin University in Australia, led a study published this week in Nature Communications that tracked the sources of some Martian meteorites discovered on Earth.

According to researchers, it is known that 166 Martian rocks have landed on our planet over the past 20 million years, but it is difficult to trace their precise origins on Mars. The research team created a database containing 90 million craters on Mars and used machine learning algorithms to narrow down potential meteorite launch sites. Tooting matches a set of Martian meteorites (classified as "shergottites") discovered on Earth.

"By observing the location of secondary impact craters - or small craters formed by ejecta from larger craters recently formed on the planet - we found that Tooting crater is the most likely source of these meteorites ejected from Mars 1.1 million years ago," Lagain said in a statement on Wednesday.

Knowing where these meteorites come from can help fill in the missing information about Mars and its geological processes. Tooting Crater is located in an area known for its volcanic history, formed in an area shaped by lava flows.

"This discovery suggests that volcanic eruptions occurred in this region 300 million years ago, which is very recent from a geological time scale. It also provides new insights into the planetary structure beneath this volcanic region," said co first author Gretchen Benedix, a cosmomineralogist and astrogeologist at Curtin University.

Having fragments of Mars on Earth can tell scientists a lot about this red planet. This is why NASA is working hard to bring back rock samples through the Perseverance spacecraft and future Mars sample return missions.

Do you know that there are six ways to open fusion positioning technology?

In our daily lives, over 80% of information belongs to relevant information with spatial location characteristics. Location information is closely related to people's production and life. Whether in indoor or outdoor environments, the need to quickly and accurately obtain location information of mobile terminals and provide location services has become increasingly urgent. The demand for positioning is no longer limited to rough trajectories and navigation. In the era of the Internet of Things, high-precision positioning is becoming a must-have.

On May 18th, the China Satellite Navigation and Positioning Association released the "2021 China Satellite Navigation and Location Service Industry Development White Paper" (hereinafter referred to as the "White Paper"), which pointed out that the total industry output value in 2020 increased by 16.9% year-on-year, reaching 403.3 billion yuan. The growth rate of the high-precision positioning market far exceeds that of the entire industry, with a year-on-year increase of 47.5% in 2020 and a total output value of 11.04 billion yuan. Between 2010 and 2020, the annual sales revenue of high-precision positioning products increased tenfold, with a compound annual growth rate of 26%, and significantly accelerated in 2020.

In current practical applications, adding positioning functions requires independent positioning technology solutions, which also means additional costs. Therefore, this means that users cannot simply consider positioning solutions as a "icing on the cake" function and must generate tangible value, such as security monitoring, vehicle monitoring, prison supervision, drones, agricultural machinery, engineering machinery, surveying instruments, machinery, and IoT terminals.

With the emergence of emerging applications (such as autonomous vehicle and unmanned aerial vehicles), technological breakthroughs (such as dual band chipsets for the mass market) and market service optimization (in some countries, high-precision positioning services are cheap or even free), the market for high-precision positioning services has developed very rapidly, which will not only be professional application level services, but also become mass level services.

Therefore, the White Paper points out that precise spatiotemporal services are gradually replacing current location services as the core direction of industrial development, and high-precision mass application innovation has become an inevitable trend in industry development.

Bluetooth wireless technology unleashes the charm of high-precision positioning

As mentioned earlier, high-precision positioning is becoming a must-have, and the realization of this demand also depends on long-term technological accumulation. With the advancement and popularization of communication technologies such as Bluetooth, WiFi, UWB, and 5G, various communication positioning solution suppliers are constantly improving in high-precision. The improvement of technology provides a foundation for the application implementation of high-precision positioning.

Bluetooth was initially well-known for its communication function, and currently its four major applications are audio transmission, data transmission, location services, and Mesh networks. Nowadays, location services will be the fastest-growing application field for Bluetooth.

According to the latest Bluetooth Market Update in 2021 released by SIG, despite the outbreak of the COVID-19 and the resulting travel and work restrictions, the deployment of Bluetooth location-based services has declined by about 25% in the short term. However, due to continued market interest in asset tracking and indoor positioning use cases, analysts expect Bluetooth location service deployment to rebound by the end of 2021 and achieve a compound annual growth rate of 32% from now to 2025.

By the end of 2021, the total deployment of Bluetooth location services will reach 262000.

From 2021 alone, indoor navigation will exceed the deployment volume of other location services: although location service solutions support many different use cases from proximity services to asset tracking, indoor navigation is necessary for deploying each location service. Currently, nearly 80% of Bluetooth location service deployments include indoor navigation functionality.

Retail use cases lead the deployment of Bluetooth location services: The impressive volume of Bluetooth technology is showing strong growth trends in multiple vertical fields. Currently, 66% of Bluetooth deployments support retail use cases, and it is expected that Bluetooth deployments will double in the next five years.

Bluetooth technology has formed a huge ecosystem, and it is expected that the annual shipment volume of Bluetooth devices will reach 6.4 billion by 2025. The emerging Bluetooth AoA/AoD technology will bring higher and better positioning performance, and based on the vast ecosystem of Bluetooth, it will help accelerate the promotion and implementation of this new technology. From the perspective of location service applications alone, by 2025, the deployment volume of Bluetooth real-time asset tracking cases will reach 516000; The deployment volume of indoor location services will double; The Bluetooth medical location service solution will grow by about 5 times to reach 380000. In addition, "smartphones, also known as digital keys," are now widely accepted as payment methods for digital wallets, and smartphones will continue to expand their role in daily life.

The Battle of Positioning Technology: Fusion Positioning Is the Way Out

Fragmentation is the biggest characteristic of the Internet of Things industry, and different Internet of Things applications have vastly different needs. Just as there is no communication technology that can adapt to all Internet of Things applications, there is no positioning technology that can meet all positioning scenarios. In many application scenarios, after meeting the functional requirements, in order to pursue better cost-effectiveness, multiple positioning technologies need to be integrated and applied, The integration of positioning technology solutions has gradually become a trend in the industry.

At present, many manufacturers have considered or are attempting to integrate positioning technology in the system development process.

Bluetooth AOA+UWB fusion localization

The former has the advantage of smaller area scenes, while the latter has the advantage of larger or even super large area scenes. The cost advantages and disadvantages of each scenario are huge. To solve the limitations of the above two single systems, coupled with the diverse or even complex types of on-site positioning scenarios, the two positioning schemes are fused and heterogeneous to improve the confidence and reliability of positioning results, and solve the problem of poor anti occlusion ability of single UWB positioning systems The problem of large jump in positioning data; And solve the problem of large errors caused by assuming terminal height in a single AoA positioning system, effectively reducing deployment costs while fully meeting positioning requirements.

It is reported that multiple projects have been implemented, covering multiple industries such as prisons, nursing homes, hospitals, substations, and oil and gas pipelines. In the future, more in-depth research and achievement transformation will also be carried out in the field of indoor positioning.

5G+Bluetooth AOA fusion positioning

The arrival of the 5G era has shown telecommunications operators the value of combining indoor positioning technology with 5G, as operators naturally have the ability to build and maintain indoor communication networks. Nowadays, operators deploy 5G in the order of outdoor first and then indoor, which means deploying outdoor macro base stations first and indoor small base stations at the rear. With the construction of 5G indoor network coverage, operators have begun to consider deploying a "5G communication+precise location" network, integrating positioning base stations and communication base stations for deployment.

Bluetooth AOA+iBeacon fusion positioning

This solution relies on multi-source fusion positioning algorithms, supporting the integration of positioning technologies such as Bluetooth, inertial navigation, satellite positioning, AOA, etc., providing high-precision indoor and outdoor integrated positioning and dynamic navigation. It can be applied to industries such as healthcare, transportation, culture, and commerce. For large-scale indoor scenes such as remote sensing, parks, transportation hubs, museums, exhibition halls, shopping centers, and parking lots, it provides indoor and outdoor integrated maps and positioning Navigation and other location IoT services, as well as long-term and reliable personnel and asset location IoT services.

Geomagnetic/inertial navigation+Bluetooth AOA fusion positioning

This system is a fusion positioning scheme with magnetic field positioning as the core. The magnetic field characteristics are generated by the combination of geomagnetic field and building structure, which vary non-uniformly with spatial position and remain stable over time. The fusion positioning terminal product is equipped with inertial positioning, magnetic field positioning, and fusion algorithms. By obtaining data such as magnetic field, acceleration, angular velocity, and Bluetooth signal strength, user position information can be calculated.

Bluetooth Mesh light networking area+high-precision fusion positioning

The system uses lighting fixtures as carriers and adopts decentralized Mesh communication technology and AI technology to build an efficient, easy-to-use, and low-cost indoor wireless network. It integrates various networks such as the Internet of Things, location network, and sensor network, and is an important component of spatial digital solutions. The positioning accuracy of different positioning areas can be selected according to different needs and cost constraints, And after the project is implemented, adjustments can continue without affecting the deployed system.

Large capacity+full duplex+high-precision fusion positioning

The system adopts software defined radio technology and utilizes technologies with high capacity, wide coverage, accurate positioning, and full duplex in the Bluetooth frequency band, solving the limitation of Bluetooth's inability to be deployed on a large scale in limited areas. Through the use of base stations, fully enclosed closed-loop operations for positioning, sensing data collection, and device control are achieved, solving the problem of "last meter" multi device duplex communication. This enhances the control capabilities of the real visual field for industries such as fire protection, industry, medical, security, and industry, and creates more application scenarios.

Write at the end

At present, the most popular indoor high-precision positioning technologies in the industry are Bluetooth AOA and UWB. Before 2020, UWB was a hot technology for indoor high-precision positioning, and with the iteration of Bluetooth standards and protocols, Bluetooth AOA technology began to emerge. Although Bluetooth AOA technology is only a small branch of high-precision positioning technology, it has broad market opportunities.

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