drone
Latest
Camera drones without mirrors or lenses to monitor future battlefields, you
As the military industrial complex surges forward, so do advances in technology for the public sector. At least that's how the cold-war wisdom goes. Case in point: QinetiQ is developing a lens-less, mirror-less, battlefield imaging system with some help from your DARPA's deep pockets. The LACOSTE project (Large Area Coverage Optical Search while Track and Engage) aims to set aloft high-altitude (about 20km) drones and air-ships fitted with a special, thousand-strong microscopic sensor array (a "first of their kind," according to QinetiQ), a "mask," and image processor to decode the scene and extract an image of the quickly changing conditions on the battlefield or, you guessed it, city streets. The resulting lightweight and highly-durable system should feature a "super resolution" mode with the ability to "detect and simultaneously track large numbers of moving vehicles in dense urban areas with a high degree of accuracy, 24-hours a day." And here you thought CCTV was intrusive. [Via BBC]
When carebears attack
CrazyKinux from The Drone Bay podcast, and of course one of Massively's EVE Online columnists, had an interesting find which he recently shared on his site. "When Carebears Attack" isn't the newest video out there, but given the absolute hammering that miners have been taking in Empire space over the past few months, it's quite timely. Here we see an exhumer pilot named 'JNB' who's fed up with ore thieves and being griefed in general, simply for being a miner. While not technically griefing as it's considered a fair use of game mechanics, 'can flipping' is the time-honored tradition of a thief sneaking up on a mining vessel and replacing the floating cargo container (being mined into for greater efficiency) with his own, bearing the same name. When the miner or his hauler unknowingly removes ore from the thief's can, the innocent party becomes criminally flagged -- ironically, for being a thief himself -- and then is predictably blown apart by his antagonist. Concord, i.e. 'the police' in EVE, takes no action against the can flipper. Tired of this use of game mechanics, the carebear in this video snaps and starts hunting down griefers in a repurposed Hulk, which is little more than a fancy mining vessel; it's completely unfit for PvP... or is it? The footage shows the miner racking up a respectable kill count by using his normally defensive drones as vicious little attackers. It turns out some carebears have teeth after all.
Hovering drone could report for work at Miami-Dade police station
We didn't even flinch when we heard that hovering drones employed by Big Brother were going to work in the UK, but somehow those buggers have managed to wander over to America's east coast. Granted, the pilotless drones -- crafted with good intentions by Honeywell -- that are slated to report in to the Miami-Dade police department aren't exactly the same, but they are expected to be used for similar duties. More specifically, they'll be loosed in order to oversee "urban areas with an eye toward full-fledged employment in crime fighting." According to a department spokesman, the fuzz are only looking to use it in "tactical situations as an extra set of eyes," but don't be shocked to see flashing lights from a vehicle without wheels next time you're rolling (a little too) quick down South Beach.
Army orders 24 new sentry-bots, Judgment Day moved up two months
Sure, you laughed yesterday when you heard professor Noel Sharkey warn against the impending, apocalyptic man vs. machine battle that was to come, but this news may have you singing a different tune. A pilot program in Nevada which employed robotic sentries to patrol Hawthorne Army Depot is getting an upgrade: 24 brand new drones called MDARS, or "Mobile Detection and Assessment and Response System." The $40 million purchase will nab the Army diesel-powered robots which operate at speeds up to 20 MPH, use RFID tags to keep track of locks and barriers, and can run for 16 hours without refueling. Though the bots have been tested with automatic weapons, these new versions will be equipped with non-lethal armaments, thus making them considerably less deadly when Skynet goes online.[Via Wired]
Korean researchers build a fuel cell UAV that runs for 10 hours
Researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology recently demonstrated a fuel cell system that can power an RC plane for up to 5 hours on just 500 grams (17 ounces) of liquid hydrogen, and is expected to power a UAV variant of the plane for up to 10 hours when the autonomous pilot system in completed. KAIST hopes to use the tech in a future Korean military UAV, and, pending funding, expects to have a complete production-ready drone within two years. Sadly, there's no word on when Korean kids will be able to hold all-night drone-flying stamina contests, but we're waiting for that YouTube video pretty eagerly.[Via AutoBlog Green]
U.S. deploying first robotic aerial drone squadron
It looks like the unmanned aerial drones now on duty in Iraq and Afghanistan will soon be getting a lot more company, with the U.S. reportedly set to deploy its first full-on "robotic" drone squadron. According to the AP, the US will be deploying an unspecified number of MQ-9 Reaper "hunter-killer" drones, which are about the size of a jet fighter and are able to fly at speeds of 300 mph and reach altitudes of 50,000 feet -- each of which can be controlled from a base in Nevada. While further details are obviously scarce, the drones will apparently be deployed to Afghanistan first, with the fleet expected to expand to Iraq sometime between this fall and next spring.[Via Slashdot]
NASA planning methane-sniffing rocket plane for Mars mission
It's often been said that where there's water there's life, but NASA now looks to be seeing if the same can also be said of good 'ol methane, with New Scientist reporting that researchers at the agency have drawn up plans for a rocket plane that could one day sniff out sources of the gas on Mars. If it's given the go ahead, the plane would parachute down to Mars before being cut loose at an altitude of 1.5 kilometers, when the plane's rockets would kick it send it skimming across the Martian surface. On board sensors would then be able to detect methane at levels as low as a few parts per billion, as well as determine the source of the gas, which some speculate could be living micro-organisms. Of course, there's no indication of when that might take place, with the plane already failing to make the shortlist for NASA's 2011 Mars Scout mission.
Pilotless airplane! Drone! Drone!
Man, it's a good thing we only write about "piloted drones", right? Check out this voicemail the San Francisco Chronicle received from a reader who got WAY too bent out of shape over the paper's use of the phrase "pilotless drone" in the sub-title of an article about UAVs.P.S. - Someone please remix this.[Via reddit]LISTEN
MIT profs create autonomous UAVs
Creating a robot that can manage to fly around a room on its own without hitting a wall is a mean feat to pull off, but that's exactly what a team of professors at MIT have managed to do. Their multiple-UAV test platform is capable of complex tasks like following moving ground-based objects with little or no direct control from a human -- yup, unfortunately that geek dream of a cockpit will no longer be required if these guys get their way. The current test setup is made up of $700 four-rotorblade helicopters, monitored by networked computers, which could theoretically allow a single person -- or even a bored student with an internet connection -- to control several UAVs at a time. Current flying drone systems require a team of trained personnel to keep a single UAV airborne and on target, so this endeavor is certainly a step up in software terms. How well the test system will transition from tracking radio controlled cars in a lab to lets say, a stolen car going at 125MPH, remains to be seen.Read - Videos of the UAV in actionRead - The Boston Globe
L.A. drone grounded, disciplinary action possible
The folks who keep planes from crashing into one another over at the FAA were none too pleased to read about that little UAV demo conducted by the L.A. County Sheriff's Department this weekend, with the agency telling Sheriff Lee Baca and company to keep their drone grounded pending the result of an investigation. What's more, the department could actually face disciplinary action for the SkySeer's inaugural flight -- FAA spokesperson Laura Brown commented that although the agency wasn't "peeved," they were "definitely surprised" that authorization had not been requested for the trial. Commander Sid Heal, point man for this program tasked with spying on Angelinos locating criminal suspects, lost hikers, and missing children, countered by arguing that since private citizens can fly model planes without FAA clearance, it's puzzling that providers of a so-called public service would be required to do so. While this temporary delay will probably come as a relief to Big Brother-fearing privacy advocates, it still seems pretty inevitable that one day thousands of these drones will be patrolling every major city in America, along with millions of other walking, crawling, rolling, swimming, and hovering robots keeping an eye on every square inch of public space.[Thanks, Joel J.]
L.A. County testing unmanned surveillance drones
We knew that something like this was coming sooner or later, and now the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department has officially begun testing what will likely be the first unmanned aerial surveillance vehicle to be deployed domestically in an urban environment. Called SkySeers, these three-pound, six-foot wide drones will initially be used on an as-needed basis to replace helicopters in searching for criminal suspects or lost children and hikers, according to Commander Sid Heal, as the $25,000 to $35,000 upfront cost of each plane will quickly be recouped by the $1,200 saved for every extra hour a copter can stay grounded. Since each of the foldable, GPS-guided SkySeers -- which are equipped with remote-controlled thermal and pan-tilt cams -- can only stay aloft for a maximum of sixty minutes, it's not yet feasible to use them as round-the-clock watchdogs, but privacy groups are concerned that eventually the sky could be filled with drones ripe for all kinds of abuse. Still, unless you're involved in some shady activities, a few more cameras peering down from the sky shouldn't bother you much more than the bevy of ATMs, security cams, and cameraphones already capturing your every move from the moment you step out of the house in the morning.[Via The Independent, pic courtesy of Octatron]
