Irreversible, normally closed, solid-state thermal switch
| DWPI Title: Method for encoding terrain maps e.g. digital elevation models (DEM) carried onboard aircraft, involves encoding DEM into number of grid cells in phase space parameterized by spatial scale, orientation, and two-dimensional offset |
| Abstract: An irreversible, normally closed, solid-state thermal switch is comprised of a rare-earth metal hydride thin film that can be integrated to an on-board microheater for switch actuation. The active metal hydride switch material undergoes a thermodynamically stable reduction-oxidation (REDOX) reaction leading to a multi-decade change in resistance. The switched state is maintained when the device is cooled back to room temperature, meaning the switch is irreversible and suitable as a thermal fuse. The nature of the REDOX-based approach to thermal switching is also suitable for passive operation in thermal environments. |
| Use: Method for encoding terrain maps i.e. digital elevation models carried onboard the aircraft. |
| Advantage: The inputs to the localization problem are sensory measurements as opposed to locations. Due to the redundancy gained through the use of multiple grid modules, not only is the algorithm fairly robust to noise, but is an observed graceful degradation in the resulting location estimates, which is most visually apparent in the bit-flip results. The odometry information corrects the phase candidates for relative displacement may be provided by an inertial measurement unit. Instead of any significant amount of hyperparameter tuning, as well as to demonstrate the robustness of our approach, the numbers that simply fall within a reasonable order of magnitude are chosen. |
| Novelty: The method (1400) involves receiving (1402) a DEM of a terrain. The DEM is encoded (1404) into a number of grid cells in a phase space parameterized by spatial scale, orientation, and two-dimensional (2D) offset. The grid cells are aggregated (1406) with shared spatial scale and orientation into grid modules, where the 2D offset remains a free parameter. A number of locations is identified (1408) from the DEM that correspond to a given elevation to produce a contour line of locations that fall within the given elevation. Two-dimensional phase codes are calculated (1410) for each grid module to produce a phase candidate dictionary, where a subset of the 2D phase codes comprise phase candidates that correspond to locations from the contour line for the given elevation. Sensor data is received (1412) along a trajectory over the terrain, where the sensor data comprises elevation readings. |
| Filed: 7/16/2024 |
| Application Number: US18773712A |
| Tech ID: SD 15978.1 |
| This invention was made with Government support under Contract No. DE-NA0003525 awarded by the United States Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Administration. The Government has certain rights in the invention. |
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