Google Preparing to Use AI Technology to Place the Google Balloon in Space

As you may already know, SpaceX has launched the Starlink Inter-Satellite Project to install towers, provide services, and provide Internet services in difficult-to-maintain areas.

Filled to the size of a tennis court, these helium-filled balloons are positioned 65,000 feet above the sky, even above commercial aircraft, and are powered by solar panels.

But the main challenge for the researchers at Google was to keep the balloon in one place. Now, for its Internet-beaming balloons, Alphabet’s Loon has moved to a new form of a navigation device. Rather than relying on human-designed algorithms, the balloons use a Loon artificial intelligence system built over the past few years with Google AI.

According to the journal Nature, AI technology was used to maintain the balloon’s position, to find the best wind, and to determine whether its altitude should go up or down, using past meteorological and current meteorological data.

Before real-world research began in Peru, Loon and Google AI had used simulations to train the RL model through trial and error. The team then tested its capabilities with a 39-day trial over the Pacific Ocean directly against a human-crafted device called StationSeeker. For longer periods, the AI was able to hold balloons in target areas while using less energy. That’s important as it will help to provide people in a given area with more reliable internet coverage.

For balloons, Loon’s AI can find the best route considerably faster than the previous navigation system. It also does so with more efficiency. With less fuel, balloons can fly similar or larger distances than before. Loon’s record flight duration is 312 days, which earlier this year set the milestone. Maybe it would be possible for the AI system to hold balloons aloft even longer.

The company points out that this RL AI technology can determine the condition of the balloon, how much power is left in it, and what is the best course of action for people using a cell phone at the time to stay on top.

Since SpaceX’s Starlink project has already achieved some research success, what do you think is the Starlink project or the Google Loon project being the most successful proposal to bring the Internet to rural areas?