>Self-driving cars, for example, must have infinitesimally precise location data to avoid accidents.<p>I'm sure surveyors, machinists, and physicists would be interested in how "infinitesimal" location data can be obtained. This article doesn't really spell out what is going on. Did Australia use some other datum than WGS84 and now they changed it?
DON'T USE GPS ALONE FOR SELF DRIVING CARS.<p>Not even DGPS. Really. Don't. A ton of metal moving under its own volition really needs to be looking at the things around it, directly, using some kind of vison. Cameras are good.
Reminds me of the great Melbourne earthquake of 2012. And by great I do mean my flatmate came to my room and said, "Was that an earthquake?" "um....maybe. I .. I think so?"<p>My fizzy drink fell over. It was a mess. Never forget!
>Self-driving cars, for example, must have infinitesimally precise location data to avoid accidents.<p>With GPS having at best three metres accuracy? It's nice that they keep their data up to date, but I'm not so sure self-driving cars have anything to do with it.
> Australia will update its latitude and longitude after moving 1.5m<p>I imagine a guy in a Commodore's outfit climbing a ladder to some bridge (but on the land), making an observation, swatting the dust off a log book with his hanky, making an entry, closing the book, looking around with satisfaction, and then climbing back down the ladder.
Here's an animation showing Australia crashing into Indonesia in 25 million years and into China in 50 million years.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2It3ETk2MGA" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2It3ETk2MGA</a>
Wow, 7cm/yr seems fast. I thought I read once it was 1-2 cm/yr, about the same as your fingernails grow (it was a rule of thumb). Probably different plates are moving at different speeds.<p>I think it's exciting to see examples of continental drift on the human scale. Usually, all the models talk about Pangea and hundreds of millions of years, and our brains have trouble seeing the context.<p>But I wonder if we don't need a more flexible system, maybe like leap days and leap seconds that get added much more often. Or just have a global reference and an offset for the local datum that can be updated yearly.
How is it related to GPS? Usually GPS devices return coordinates in WGS84 which will not be changed. They're just updating old maps which was based on their local datums?
In a few million years, it would have moved so much that it will cut down commute times from U.S to Australia. Obviously riffing here but I am curious where it will end up in a few million years.