What scares me the most is not the military use, it this one:
> But the real prize may be in civilian applications. "The military stuff is kind of passe," Ms. Cummings said. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist from MIT to tell you if we can do it for a soldier in the field, we can do it for anybody." As a parent of a 3-year-old, she said, she could use the same technology to track her daughter on her way to school (she would need to plant an electronic bug in her lunch box or backpack). That would "bring a whole new meaning to a hover parent," she said. Schools could even use drones for perimeter control.
I don't want my kids to be controlled by drones, I don't want kids to be looked behind on their way to school like animals. If you don't give a bit of freedom to your kids, if you are always on their back, they will never mature and reach adulthood. They will never have the feeling of freedom they need to develop themselves and be great creators, scientists, whatever. They will be sheep controlled by the sheepdog of the moment.
I don't see why not, but there'd be a payload weight limit, and if popularity increased, you'd need some kind of routing system to keep bots from colliding.
You are correct that these issues need to be addressed, the FAA already has a system in place to prevent aerial collisions of commercial and private planes. I'm sure the existing regulations can be modified to be more suitable for uavs and city-scale flight patterns. For example, stay at odd-hundred elevation for north and east travel and stay at even-hundred for south and west travel.
Probably not anytime soon. The technology is there but it's going to be almost impossible to clear the legal hurdles. Currently you can fly these things as a hobby but you have to be within visual range at all times and there's all sorts of problems when flying near people or buildings. We can't even get robotic vehicles on the roads yet, it's going to be a long time before we see them flying though our suburbs.
A robotic car is big and heavy. A robotic pizza delivery blimp might be relatively harmless even if it falls on your head, especially if it stays just above pizza snatching height.
I wouldn't want to get hit by a Segway bot, or have it cause wrecks in traffic if its AI wasn't near-perfect. But a pizza-box sized bot that stuck to sidewalks could work. A car could just run over it without harm (except to the bot).
Segway pizza bot would get mugged. They also have to go the long way around, avoid cars pedestrians, dogs, obey some rules. A flying pizza delivery bot could pretty much keep 10 ft away from anything.
So will we soon see a co-evolutionary arms race as ever stealthier drones are harassed, blocked or outright disabled by ever more aggressive counter measures?
I could see the paparazzi style flying eyes being dealt with by LIDAR countermeasures. The tracking drones are already vulnerable to a number of the same tactics that involve shaking a tail of any sort. I foresee some exciting new precedents getting set from this conflict though.
I think this would bring up some interesting legal issues. I mean, obviously sending up ground to air missiles is likely going to be illegal just due to safety issues. But what if I, say, set up a drone that tangles up your drone in a net of some kind? something no more unsafe than the drone crashing due to problems? What if I only use this on drones flying low over my own property?
I think the legal issue could go either way. If it is some private entity spying on me on my own property, I don't think any jury would convict me of knocking it down, and maybe even keeping the parts. Clearly, if the interloper was doing something illegal, they might choose to abandon the property and pretend it didn't belong to them, you know, in hope it would make it difficult for me to press charges against the offending party.
If it was a government drone, though, I'd be in a bit more trouble. Now, if private usage of drones for celebrity spying etc... is common before the government starts using them to spy on US citizens, precedent could be established; but if not, well, I bet it'd turn out at best like that kid who posted photos on the internet of the clumsy car-tracking device that the feds stuck on his car, which is to say, the FBI comes and takes it back and maybe doesn't arrest you. I mean, the kid didn't break the thing, and that might make a difference. Government drones are not going to be cheap, and, I mean, someone might forget about a hacked-together $300 drone, but if it's three million? Yeah, secret technology aside, I think they are going to want their toy back.
They're welcome to ask. Repeatedly. I live in rural Indiana, and drones are close enough to black helicopters that I think it's not going to withstand close scrutiny that I take what they're freely giving.
Especially if they're flying a three million dollar drone over a town that has no fricking jobs to start with. I think people around here would be pretty interested in that disparity. Five bucks says the drones aren't manufactured here, now are they?
Five bucks says the drones aren't manufactured here, now are they?
If it is a military drone, it's almost certainly manufactured here. The military is very careful about ordering things manufactured in the US, for both political and logistical reasons. (if you do get in to a real war, you don't want to have to ship your ammo and spare parts over from the other side of the world on highly vulnerable cargo ships. And, well, if your war material is made in china, you are going to have a difficult time with your saber rattling. Also, representatives will almost certainly get re-elected if they can bring in a bunch of highly-paid defense jobs to their district. )
I'm hoping for air-to-air strike drones that hunt other drones, perhaps through echolocation. I'll gladly install some power outlets in my rafters for them to roost.
With the current technologies, a simple rock is sufficient to bring down most of the small uavs. Heck, even a stray leaf will take out some of them. Clearly strike-drones would be cool technology, but there are so many cheaper ways to bring these things down right now.
My startup makes small (2.5lbs) electric helicopter uavs. At 50ft you can't hear them any more. If you are inside your car, I could position the heli within 5-10ft of you before you might even notice.
You could make reasonably-sized miniature zeppelin drones, which can be made quiet and stealthy, but I'm not sure how maneuverable they'd be in a stiff breeze.
After viewing the video of the MIT lab using the AR Drone I'm confused...
From the Development License of the SDK Drone API (Article 5 v):
"AR.Drone, shall have for sole purpose to be used by a User for entertaining, game, leisure or training. The creation of
applications for the use of the PARROT Drone for military, and, without limitation, security, watching, spying,
defence, cartography is strictly forbidden."
Radar detectors are sold under the same sort of disclaimer that they're never, ever, ever to be used to circumvent speed limit laws. It's safe to say we can all roll our eyes at this boilerplate.
As others noted, this is largely a CYA clause. I suspect the real reason is because UAVs are a legal grey area as far as the FAA regulations are concerned. It is generally accepted that regulations for R/C aircraft also apply to UAVs. The tricky point is that the FAA regs specifically state "for recreation". So you can legally fly an R/C plane and take aerial photos as a hobby. However, if you sell those photos then now you've broken the law. (R/C clubs recommend selling one ground photo and giving away the aerial ones to skirt the issue). The AR.Parrot folks know the regulations and are simply trying to distance themselves with boiler plate.
They have the AR.Drone for comparison and entertainment, it's not considered a serious piece of equipment at all. The drone they're actually doing research on is a Ascending Technologies Hummingbird
If a machine gun with an SDK was currently sold, I would imagine it would include the following conditions;
"Machine gun shall have for its sole purpose training, sport and 'making a loud, satisfying noise'. Use for military purposes or for turning snitches and rival mafia dons into bloody swiss cheese is strictly forbidden"
I would get one to fly ahead of me when I'm driving and monitor for the road work and traffic congestion. That's until the car native navigation is finally capable of collecting this information on its own. And I want a touch screen with pinch zoom on that damn antiquated piece of hardware already. And a satellite imagery! :)
If I would want to spy on my <wife, child, whatever> I would simply write a GPS logger application and plant in on his/her Android/iPhone/whatever, I think that would be more practical and cost effective, still I can't take photos with that, so I guess this would be nice too.
What scares me the most is the possibility that they can be used for assassinations; at present drones are not fast enough, manuveable enough or stealthy enough, but thats a technical limitation that isn't likely to last for that long.
The main fear with this is that those who are going to be protecting other people are very unlikely to see this coming, nor to be especially prepared for it. The secret service (who are not the only ones who do protection, or even the main ones, but no doubt the best) are really good at closing of every attack route that they know of, but even so it is widely known that it is impossible or nearly so to stop an assassin who is willing to give up his own life. With this technology, this may become true of any person who can get an internet connection (until drones become able to navigate autonomously) and is willing to sacrifice a drone -- which is going to be a larger number of people that those who are willing go sacrifice their life.
I sincerely hope I am wrong, because I wouldn't like the kind of society that would have to be created to prevent somebody from doing this, nor the kind of surveillance methods that would be required to prevent somebody from building a drone (if your are going to kill people, you don't care if building a drone is technically illegal).
Of all the massive implications this could have assassinations is probably the most unlikely and trivial of consequences.
It's weird how the human brain can't tell the difference between totally improbable (me getting assassinated) and extremely likely (my police force, local council or employer spying on me at some point for some imagined infraction).
This sort of irrational alarmism is exactly the cause of being scanned naked at airports.
People don't kill other people very often, apart from in the various shades of wars.
The main fear with this is that those who are going to be protecting other people are very unlikely to see this coming, nor to be especially prepared for it.
Why, you think working in security means not reading a newspaper? I rather suspect that the people with the high-stakes jobs hold them because they are actually proactive rather than the sort of people who stand around waiting for something to happen.
> But the real prize may be in civilian applications. "The military stuff is kind of passe," Ms. Cummings said. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist from MIT to tell you if we can do it for a soldier in the field, we can do it for anybody." As a parent of a 3-year-old, she said, she could use the same technology to track her daughter on her way to school (she would need to plant an electronic bug in her lunch box or backpack). That would "bring a whole new meaning to a hover parent," she said. Schools could even use drones for perimeter control.
I don't want my kids to be controlled by drones, I don't want kids to be looked behind on their way to school like animals. If you don't give a bit of freedom to your kids, if you are always on their back, they will never mature and reach adulthood. They will never have the feeling of freedom they need to develop themselves and be great creators, scientists, whatever. They will be sheep controlled by the sheepdog of the moment.