Alphabet’s Loon hands the reins of its internet air balloons to self-learning AI

  • Thread starter Thread starter The Verge RSS
  • Start date Start date
T

The Verge RSS

Guest
Author: Nick Statt

1_Xfj6pEzUM5Gw3UKUaEw2qQ.0.jpeg

Image: Loon

Alphabet’s Loon, the team responsible for beaming internet down to Earth from stratospheric helium balloons, has achieved a new milestone: its navigation system is no longer run by human-designed software.

Instead, the company’s internet balloons are steered around the globe by an artificial intelligence — in particular, a set of algorithms both written and executed by a deep reinforcement learning-based flight control system that is more efficient and adept than the older, human-made one. The system is now managing Loon’s fleet of balloons over Kenya, where Loon launched its first commercial internet service in July after testing its fleet in a series of disaster relief initiatives and other test environments for much of the last...

Continue reading…

Continue reading...