Speaker 0:  the invisible backbone of modern warfare is timing, and china just shrunk that backbone to the size of a microchip. if you think losing gps is a minor inconvenience for a drone, think again. this breakthrough means autonomous swarms can now hunt and navigate without ever needing a satellite signal. atomic precision on a chip. china has reportedly developed the world's smallest chip scale atomic clock, miniaturizing a lab sized precision instrument into a component small enough for tiny drones. this effectively makes drones gps independent, allowing them to operate through heavy electronic jamming that would blind standard commercial or military hardware. what do you think about this, john?

Speaker 1:  i think this is amazing. this is a cool breakthrough. so just so that we're all on the same page, currently on chips. right, current clocks on chips to microprocessors, socs, microcontrollers, they're generated using a combination of external low frequency quartz crystals and internal high speed circuits called phase locked loops. so there's a crystal oscillator, which is most digital systems. they're gonna start with a quartz crystal, and it acts like a, fixed frequency, low speed reference, typically around, like, 20 to 25 hertz, when voltage is applied. and then there's the phase lock loop, which is, receives a low frequency signal and multiplies it up to the required high operating frequency of the cpu. so that's what we're currently using. now the breakthrough, this centers on miniaturized atomic clocks, which is csacs, which is, chip scale atomic clocks. so unlike traditional clocks, atomic clocks measure time based on vibrations of atoms. we're talking usually cesium or rubidium, which makes them incredibly precise. so so far, they've been able to shrink atomic clock to centimeters centimeter scale devices. were able to reduce power consumption to milliwatts, and they've able to make them suitable for integration into small drones. and it's critical because traditional atomic clocks were too large, too expensive, and way too power hungry. so now they're small and cheap enough for mass deployment. and so this matters more than gps? so modern navigation systems rely on precise timing signals from satellites. but in contested environment, gps signals can be jammed or spoofed. and so atomic clocks solve this by enabling independent onboard timing, so position navigation timing or pnt. so the synchronization between drones can happen without external signals. so it allows swarms to maintain formation, coordinate movements, and fuse sensor data even when completely disconnected from satellites, which is super, super cool. now this doesn't protect them from, what's the the the the the eps what's the signal that, that completely destroys electronics? the pulse. it doesn't protect them from that, but, this will protect them from, interference from a signal, it jammers, or things like that. what am i thinking of?

Speaker 0:  emp.

Speaker 1:  emp device. sorry. yes.

Speaker 0:  sorry. i said it, but i was muted. oh. i like to think of this as an update, like upgrading a drone from a cheap stopwatch to a world class switch watchmaker living inside the motherboard. most drones count time like a person tapping their foot. eventually, they get off beat and lose their place. that's drift. the atomic chip uses the vibration of atoms as a universal metronome that never skips a beat keeping the drone perfectly on course even when it eyes gps or poked out. we know that, that's a common military thing where, they can take out your gps or tell, your computer you're somewhere else you're not, so your response. and so they're from a military point of view, having this protected, so it can't be attacked is, it doesn't tell your drone or your plane or whatever that, you know, misleading information that you aren't where you are or takes out that information. it's definitely a leap ahead.

Speaker 1:  yeah. yeah. this is really cool because it it could so as we're seeing right now on the battlefield, what's winning is cheaper, cheaper warfare, if that makes sense. so, like, these cheaper drones and things like this. and so if they can produce these onboard, atomic clocks cheaper, well, now you have cheap drones plus onboard atomic clocks, which is essentially a high performance form system.

Speaker 0:  well, the world gets kinda scary when you start putting all these things together, like the cardboard drones from korea. this new, atomic clock built in, we talked about a couple of weeks ago the, chinese drones space carrier that just drops them from near whatever, drops thousands and thousands of them. and it gets pretty scary from a this is a new, war. the technology is cool, but i hope we don't have to see it. yeah. at least in a military application.

Speaker 1:  yeah. who knows?

Speaker 0:  yeah. this, chip scale atomic clock form factor utilize atomic energy transitions, like rhodium or likely rhodium or cesium to provide timing stable orders of magnitude higher than quartz oscillators. so, this is a cornerstone of quantum timing. it exploits a consistent state transition of atoms governed by laws of quantum mechanics to create frequency reference that is nearly immune to environmental interference. this is the biggest shift in navigational, navigation since the transition from sexton's to gps. so we're moving from external reference navigator navigation relying on satellites to autonomous internal navigation. so it'll be interesting to see what happens, and i like that they're talking about that it's near, impossible to mess with, but that's because, nearly immune to environmental interference. but we've never tried to create this kind of environmental interference before because why would we?

Speaker 1:  exactly. yeah. and, like, this isn't just china, though. right? the us air force is exploring this. nist and darpa have chip scale, atomic clock development. there's, like, every military is working on this. so it's not just china.

Speaker 0:  absolutely. while we call them clocks, the device are actually high precision frequency standards. the ticking is the microwave signal emitted when electron changes its energy state. the us company, symetron, now microchip technology, released the first commercial csac in 2011, but china's new breakthrough focused on a significant reduction in the physical footprint and power draw, for the attributable expandable contract. so they've released this. china's just made it really small, and everyone else is on a race to do the same, i guess. the precision timing is so sensitive that atomic clocks at different altitudes tick at different speeds due to einstein's theory of relativity. though at a chip scale, the drone's biggest challenge is actually heat dispassion, not gravity.

Speaker 1:  yeah. yeah. that's really cool. and i love yeah. i i'm excited for, the, the integrations in the future into technology for sure. not just for military uses, for any other kind of use. so

Speaker 0:  yeah. so this lab breakthrough isn't quite a battlefield reality yet. these chips must survive high g maneuvers, extreme temperature swings of high altitude flight, and intense vibration without losing their atomic clock. so if you're a drone or in the drone or robotics industry, you should start taking a look at these, towards sensor fusion because the hardware is getting smart enough to do a lot of things. we're entering an era of unjamble autonomy. you know? we're all our robots are gonna have this. we, you know, we're thinking drones and this and that because it's a thing. but give this to every robot. you know, elon musk and many people say there's gonna be more every human's gonna have at least one, if not more. robots are gonna be more robots than cars, more robots than anything else, and they're all gonna have these type of chips in them so they can know exactly where they are at a micro level, in your home. i think it's interesting to see where we're going with this. so if the gps went dark tomorrow, would you trust an autonomous drone to fly over your house using only its internal clock? let me know in the chat.