Some of these things doesn't seem to infeasible, although some of the suggestions to solving the technical problems may not be very accurate? The wings seem rather awkward.
The capabilities of these quad copters (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2la4pIyXOEQ) aren't so far off. Then you have to add person recognition and a bunch of other stuff. It's supposed to be "moderately visionary".
The "People were skeptical about X 10 years ago, and now we have X, so technological skepticism is wrong!" argument is profoundly spurious. The fact is that some of the technologies mentioned in this video are very probably impossible (e.g. harvesting enough energy from vibrating machinery for powered drone flight).
And for each of those many ideas that are currently infeasible, there are probably other solutions that will turn out to be more practical. Technology doesn't progress by someone saying "Here's a way we can probably do this thing in the future, we just need to fill in the details." It works by fulfilling incremental goals toward improving existing technology. Any speculation about currently-impossible means to the end of overarching goals is just adding burdensome details. ( http://lesswrong.com/lw/jk/burdensome_details/ )
So if someone predicts that in the next few decades, we may have small drones that can handle gusts of wind, that's not a bad prediction. When they predict that wind gusts will be handled by a nature-inspired wing-flapping-with-feedback system the which does not remotely exist, you should stop listening. Those extra details sound like they give the hypothesis more credibility, but in fact they are constraining its predictions to a laughably tiny space.
I am afraid you missed my point. I was responding to the statement "Cheap 3D renderings of hypothetical uses of not-so-technically-feasible dronish things. Nothing to see here.". That statement is so categorically dismissive that it prompted me to ask if he/she was equally dismissive of other (relatively recent) similar inventions. Nowhere did I suggest that "technological skepticism is wrong". To rephrase your comment more aligned with my point: "people were skeptical about X 10 years ago, and now we have X, therefore the skepticism about X (not everything under the sun) was wrong".
Last year we witnessed an amazingly complex landing of the Mars rover. There were about a million things that could have gone wrong, and I would bet money that there were skeptics (probably even within the technical leadership). Were they wrong to be skeptical? Of course not -- they had sound reasons to be skeptical, and a strong chance of being right. However, the mission was a success, and those skeptics (smart as they were) were proved wrong.
I'm surprised you pounced on my statement rather than the absurdly dismissive comment I was referring to. I'll write it off to caffeine :-) .
These guys are claiming 4 to 8 hours, 4,000 feet etc. http://www.uniteddrones.com/aether-aero/
Heck even 10 minutes flying and one day solar recharge would be awesome in an urban area for stealthy long term observation.
They were around 10 years ago... More importantly, there is nothing revolutionary about quadcopters compared to the RC helicopters they were developed from. Mostly, the mechanics are a bit simpler, and the multiple rotors+engines make them a bit more robust.
This stuff is science fiction at this point. Moreover, this article / video describes this scenario, when it ever becomes technically feasible, as if it would come without regulations, without (financial) restrictions and as if no counter measures would be invented in the mean time.
On the subject of countermeasures: I worked for a defense contractor over a decade ago which was developing countermeasures for such things. On the basis of supply/demand, they obviously weren't doing it for a laugh.
With a relatively unconstrained budget, access to technology which is quite scary and secrecy regime, we might already be there behind closed doors.
how would the countermeasures for such things look like, really? I can imagine few things that would work: EMPs - nope, as they would be used most likely in a heavily populated area with everybody relying on electronics; an array of sensor systems connected to something like remote operated guns - too hard to do this without serious damage in a heavily populated are. There's few things that a team of "bad guys" operating in a heavily populated area can do to defend themselves from this tech...
Directed microwave weapons (fry RF circuits), guided high energy lasers (physical damage), barrage nets (trap), radio jamming (kill ability to return information), doping logical resting points with glue (trap), ASTOR radar (finding source and destroying), honey traps (trap), building other drones to physically knock them out (physical damage), flares (sensor overload).
That's what I came up with in a couple of minutes.
I know it might sound a little bit unethical, but I find this coming revolution (+ I really think it is a coming revolution) incredibly exciting.
Though there are endless evil creepy uses, there are also many very, very nice ones too - finding (+ even rescuing in awful weather with a big UAV) missing people is an obvious one, courier delivery is another (not with micro uavs though!)
Having said that, I can't help but find the evil uses incredibly exciting too. Like military weapons that are deadly and awful in practice, there is some engineering loveliness there too (just look at an F22 for an e.g.). Sue me.
Technology can be used in many ways, and I believe it has no inherent "evilness" to it; it's all in how it gets used. You can do both wonderful as well as horrible things with, e.g. medicine, nuclear physics, electricity, computers, 3D printers, etc. Granted, the video shows off a military application of this particular technology, so there isn't much particularly warm and fuzzy about it.
That said, I'm a bit surprised at the overall response from the tech sites I frequent (HN, etc); it's almost as if everyone universally agrees that this is the epitome of evil or something. IMHO, there are far scarier things that will happen in our lifetimes.
> What exactly is a non-evil way to use a microdrone with lethal armament?
Pest control? :-)
We're talking about a class of technology here anyway, yes the specific instances tend to obviously be for good or evil, but a class of technology has a wide range of applications.
Also, I think you could argue that improving military technology so the military only murder specifically those people they meant to murder (I hate these 'collateral damage'-type weasel words) is a good thing.
I still can't get over that perching bird drone which seems to have been designed without any concept of basic physics. It takes off via a single rotor, has no means of anti-torque, yet doesn't spin around uncontrollably during take off. It's like they asked an eight-year-old to design a drone, and then just prettied-up his drawings in 3D without talking to any engineers.
The blogger who wrote this up as terrifying isn't really with the program. With a friend of mine building laser-guided mosquito zappers in her backyard, drones like these are relatively easy to deter. Of course it leads to an arms race, but maybe we'll eradicate those mid-summer bloodsuckers while we're at it.
Drone proliferation, military and civil, is unavoidable.
It depends on the cost of developing weapons, the cost of countermeasures, the relative effectiveness of both, and target selection.
Shielding high-value targets from ultra-small drones would be relatively easy. For someone bent on terror or softer targets, it's harder, and the attacker need only succeed once (or a relatively small number of times).
'Bad guys' is very subjective. I would argue that anyone who wants a flying death machine capable of killing people with a button-push from thousands of miles away is a 'bad guy'.
The US and its allied forces presently have an overwhelming superiority in drone devices (airborne as well as land and sea based). Other parties are likely to catch up, even if only with more primitive devices and at smaller volumes of production, relatively quickly.
The scenario which becomes ... interesting ... is where all parties have access to technology of this type.
Criticisms of the US notwithstanding, the nation generally acts with some level of conscience and oversight. The same cannot be said of all adversaries. An Al Qaeda, North Korea, Iran, or African warlord with such weapons would likely have far fewer reservations in their use.
Even conventional RC aircraft, radio and GPS controls, and small explosives or other ordinance could be used to lethal effect.
Sure, and that's one of the reasons I used such an obviously vague phrase.
The point being that no matter who you define as good or bad, once the cat's out of the bag, it's out, and probably this stuff will be acquired by, and used by, people whose goals you abhor.
And that's really scary.
[I don't think that there's some sort of inherent connection of the tech with "bad", because there are always going to be certain uses, if maybe very narrow ones, which the vast majority of people would find justified. E.g. blah blah Hitler blah blah.]
One day when the high school dropout in the TSA feeling you up at the airport decides he doesn't like you or that you insulted him, he will be able to walk over to a monitor and trace your past month as recorded on a series of drones - all cataloged by license plate and origin addresses.
What's wrong with a high school dropout? You feel superior? Maybe you should change your attitude towards your fellow man so they don't hate you. Maybe a dropout was a drop because people like you looking down on others.
I think you're reading too much into it, I'm sure he didn't mean to offend high school dropouts specifically, and that he means that too much discretionary power is put into the hands of a random person that happens to be employed by homeland security. Which is indeed a scary thought. Some people will always have reasons to dislike you, whatever you do.
That's a valid point to challenge my thinking about some hs dropouts.
But if you feel there are any TSA workers who are thoughtful, intelligent beings, you are way off. It has massive turnover for darn good reason. Think about the lack of thought and care that has to go into taking a job like that. I mean you would have to really enjoy people hating you, enjoy violating people, or just not caring, and any of that make for a really horrible personality.
There have been rumors for years suggesting that these types of devices (unarmed) are already being used for domestic surveillance. It should be noted that a google search didn't reveal any solid proof beyond eyewitness accounts. http://www.snopes.com/photos/technology/insectdrone.asp
From what I understand in terms of weight vs battery life tradeoffs, flight times are limited to about 10-15 minutes on helicopter like aircraft. That's nowhere near enough for continuous operations like those illustrated in the video.
meh. "Most Terrifying" is a bit of hyperbole I suppose. I was expecting to see actual Assassination By Drone footage or a drone "liquidation" on US soil or something.
Did anyone really not see this coming? Pervasive, ubiquitous surveillance(+) is fairly obviously in our current-to-near-future. The fact that others will be able to build similar technology (aside from the US military/government), while scary, might be better than the alternative (one power having a monopoly on ubiquitous surveillance).
In all honesty, despite the scary-voice narrative, I think this is a boon for urban war scenarios like Iraq. If I was a soldier, I would much rather see this vision be realized, than be the person to conduct night raids or go door-to-door to try to track someone.
Of course, this leads into being used in non-war scenarios (Minority Report style), which is where I suspect most of the discussion will center around.
So we should make it even easier for aggressive powers to invade and kill innocent people? It isn't easy enough already? The more you make it hard for the people you're victimizing to hit back the more they'll be forced to the only action left to them: things like 9/11.
Kinda stupid and short-sighted, I think. The technology won't work the way it's shown, it's just not feasible. What happens when you send a thousand tiny bombs or guns into a city? How do you make sure that they don't end up accidentally killing civilians (through malfunction)? How do you make sure that you don't accidentally end up arming your enemy since they can be captured with a simple net? How do you handle MAV's being counteracted by other MAV's and anti-MAV systems? How do you manage the torrent of data from an MAV swarm?
You don't have them going on a shooting spree unguided. Even an evil military superpower will have a human making the last call on pulling the trigger. Have the drone sending a video stream as soon as it discovers a target that seem remotely interesting. Let the operator choose what get to live another day.
Point being, a single operator can potentially control many drones spread out over a large area.
What is the benefit of a human in the loop, if he is just trained to push a button when the red light flashes? AFAIK this is essentially the situation with current bombers, a computer locks the target, and another one calculates when the bomb should be dropped. In such an szenario the 'human in the loop' is just PR, since the protocols are specifically designed to minimize the impact of said human.
Discerning between threats and civilians to a high enough certainty should be a challenge. And throwing out a bunch of drones that goes about semi-randomly doesn't have to be a liability unless they also shoot people and destroy things semi randomly.
