Drone swarms. What's your thoughts on the tech and applications good and bad?

I think we all know that this is going to come to be common sometime not too far in the future from now, so what's anyone thoughts on the implications and ramifications for it when it arrives enforce?

Thoughts, ideas, uses, data, defense with and from... Whatever you got feel free to post it!

Depends, if you read old scifi books or even Orwells 1984 (man he underplayed that!) then yes it does seem scary, in the UK Parliament is in charge. Which means we vote or elect people to choose for us based on what they say when they go for election, after el;election we rely on there judgment.

Now i am not being political, i am explaining the system to TCM, now this has worked ok ish for donkeys, except in situations like now. Take brexit, it dosnt matter what side you voted, the mp's are saying they get to choose on out behalf because thats there job. this is a curious situation. Alot of MP's are openly against Brexit, like it or not though the UK voted for it.

But those implementing it do so as they see fit, they say you voted for me to act on your behalf as I see fit. this becomes dangerous as we are seeing now, despite the vote many of them of twisting it in the name of acting for the good of the people the represent. its getting messy, so back to your point.

IF you can get the power away from this kind of situation then yes it could be good, currently we have a cheque and balance of of the house of lords, this is likely to get killed off. that is one less layer of protection, as seen in the defeat of the disabled bill.
Sorry but i have to use real political situations, i am being neutral however!

So drones used under reliable control could have a great benefit, i think the danger lays in the fact that 600 odd people decide for 70 million people, nearly half of those 600 vote as they are told by one person. So not that accurate but say 300 odd people decide for five years what they think 70,000,000 others want!! To me thats going to end in tears.

The predator drones are a good example, they have saved lives and taken lives, what bothers me is one person decides who lives and who dosnt. Is that not playing god? Then again from the moment we invented steam it was always going to get messy, progress is messy.

So from a technical perspective drones and swarms have a massive ability to do good, but it will solely depend on the decision maker if the tech is used for humanity or against humanity.

Bottom line for me, I sometimes wish we still lived without steam. I sometimes wish we didnt know how to split atoms, but then i am glad we have antibiotics and i am glad we have the internet and ability to learn like no other generation has. The question is really how do we use the knowledge.

tcmtech said:

I think we all know that this is going to come to be common sometime not too far in the future from now, so what's anyone thoughts on the implications and ramifications for it when it arrives enforce?

Thoughts, ideas, uses, data, defense with and from... Whatever you got feel free to post it!

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Live in a dense forest.

I live where it's windy. That seems to work pretty well as a natural defense against flying things most days too.

Same with winter cold. Lithium based battery function stinks at - 20F !

I see all these Drone delivery hype companies based in sunny rain-free places and laugh because it's a bear to fly a military helicopter in crappy weather. The drone apocalypse won't happen for most of America or the world because the weather sucks most of the time.

Is this the future?

Mike.

The EMP protection missing on most drones.

or, better yet, if you knew what the FCC ID number was on the drones in the swarm, the FCC ID number also leads you to the certification data, which has the operating frequency.... they can't swarm unless they can talk to each other.

Pommie said:

Is this the future?

Mike.

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There is already a autonomous drone, it was apparently voted out in congress and has the final say taken by a human. But the tech is there and deployed, it uses many things including NPR and face recognition, From what i saw about it congress insisted they had someone actually authorize the strike, They do however take off on there own say so and land on the same way. So tech wise we are there.

Small company in Okehampton Devon UK, makes really special guidance systems, they employ 30 people and its all military stuff. I have been in the reception and they have a display case, in the display case is a black box, being a young kid around 9 years old i asked what it did. It kills people son, it kills people it dosnt like.

All these years later it resonates, especially as someone i went to school with in Devon works there now.

As for forests.. both myself and a team from MIT have built self guiding high velocity drones capable of handling a woodland environment, mine was roughly 2-3 years ago...... The PR7 drone capable of 52 hours flight time armed with 2 missiles.

How come this year 231 sat-alights gone into space and only 70 odd are declared as to what they do?

nsaspook said:

I see all these Drone delivery hype companies based in sunny rain-free places and laugh because it's a bear to fly a military helicopter in crappy weather. The drone apocalypse won't happen for most of America or the world because the weather sucks most of the time.

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Maybe someone might work out that like some planes, some drones can fly above the weather.

Little Ghostman said:

As for forests.. both myself and a team from MIT have built self guiding high velocity drones capable of handling a woodland environment, mine was roughly 2-3 years ago...... The PR7 drone capable of 52 hours flight time armed with 2 missiles.

How come this year 231 sat-alights gone into space and only 70 odd are declared as to what they do?

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I'd like to see them fly at high velocity here in the tree cover.


For local close-in defense a high pressure water mass might be effective in disrupting their flight operations.

nsaspook said:

I see all these Drone delivery hype companies based in sunny rain-free places and laugh because it's a bear to fly a military helicopter in crappy weather. The drone apocalypse won't happen for most of America or the world because the weather sucks most of the time.

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You know Amazon is based in "always sunny" Seattle, right?

Horizon Zero Dawn.

nsaspook said:

I'd like to see them fly at high velocity here in the tree cover.


For local close-in defense a high pressure water mass might be effective in disrupting their flight operations.

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This was 3 years ago at the very start of the tech, it used stereo camera's, it could handle 30mph. A year ago the next evolution was a fly type eye system, max speed 60mph and density of cover 7X what it was 3 years ago. But at 30mph the density can be even higher.

This is the tech i know of, it says nothing of the technology likely to be out there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=107&v=_qah8oIzCwk

Now add in neural networking and this

Your trees dont seem like much protection, the drone only needs to out pace you it dosnt need high speed, fly high with heat camera, locate you and dive down, creep up along to where you are and bye bye, the scary part is it dosnt need a pilot.

Actually when i did mine it was a search and rescue in a burning building theme i went for. The hardest part was to identify a person standing up hand raised straight up in the air head looking down. The hands up adds height and head down prevents recognition. Thats what i found i couldnt solve 3 years ago, people laying on the floor etc wasnt that hard. So maybe non movement and make yourself over the max likely height.

Little Ghostman said:

the drone only needs to out pace you it dosnt need high speed, fly high with heat camera, locate you and dive down, creep up along to where you are and bye bye, the scary part is it dosnt need a pilot.

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Seems so simple, unless you factor in that humans have auditory tracking and can hear the drone following them and act accordingly by going off trail and into places that the drone simply cannot navigate or reliably identify them in due to multiple physical and logic processing limitations based on input sensory parameter limits of various sorts.

To the prepared and knowledgeable person they are a limited threat. But yes, to the typical unprepared person who doesn't know what are their likely design limitations these are terrifying concepts to have to deal with.

I wonder how well they could do at chasing someone down a wooded path that has assorted fine wire and string lines strewn across it? If the sensory system can detect them what sort of added complexity is required to process those fine stringline obstacles out Vs spiderwebs and like that it could fly through?

JonSea said:

You know Amazon is based in "always sunny" Seattle, right?

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Sure, but they don't seem to be doing their drone delivery demos there.

https://www.geekwire.com/2017/amazon-prime-air-delivery-drone-mars/

I'm sure they can make it work when the weather is nice in Seattle.

tcmtech said:

Seems so simple, unless you factor in that humans have auditory tracking and can hear the drone following them and act accordingly by going off trail and into places that the drone simply cannot navigate or reliably identify them in due to multiple physical and logic processing limitations based on input sensory parameter limits of various sorts.

To the prepared and knowledgeable person they are a limited threat. But yes, to the typical unprepared person who doesn't know what are their likely design limitations these are terrifying concepts to have to deal with.

I wonder how well they could do at chasing someone down a wooded path that has assorted fine wire and string lines strewn across it? If the sensory system can detect them what sort of added complexity is required to process those fine stringline obstacles out Vs spiderwebs and like that it could fly through?

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I cant find my post now, but back when i did it, the drone had to navigate a building, which was infact a mock up built in the school hall with rooms. We put windows in and some were open some close with clear glass, and one broken but with a hole in the middle. Using the simlink software we had at the time, the libs were basic but even back then flying through a broken windows easy, detecting a closed window even easier.

The stereo camera vision was the new bit on the drone, apart from the actual self decision making side of things, on top of that it had a laser range finder and ultrasonic sensors from a car bumper system. Moving objects are really simple to track, modern motors and light drones you wouldnt hear in 'stealth' mode. Best avoidance would IMHO be stand by a tree and face it, dont be tempted to move, get behind the drone and take it out. or signal jam, but my own drone used non standard frequencies because of noise, i used 868mHz and 969 MHz.

In reality it likely you would be taken out from 60,000 feet above and 30 miles out. But lets say they go the small killer route, then nets are good. Dead simple leave a branch in the direct path and one leave one side open, as it closed in push something to that side, the drone has no option but up into a netting and the motors catch.

this kind of stuff was what we spent weeks talking about, most of it because in our scenario what would you encounter in say a tower block fire or the twin towers? The idea behind the drone was search and rescue without sending a crew in unless needed. So we planned for buildings damaged by fire, it was a school project done for a university competition, it ended up as my project against MIT, my team dropped out leaving me after 3 weeks on my own.

Thats when the uni stepped in and lent me some student help twice a week to build stuff and do the simulink things i couldnt do. But the actual program steps and all the electronic design was mine, it wasnt that hard in reality. The big problem i had was money, the school budget was £50 i added £300 i got some equipment donated, we went up against MIT etc with budgets in the $000's and came second.

our vision system was better, there drone faster but the applications were different. Plus as i got told the following year...... a school kid beating 3rd year university students, just isnt on.

I think most of all of this is posted up on here, i have the actual drawings and schematics somewhere i might post up. Pommie gave me the direction for the maths for self flight, he answered a different question but turns out same maths involved. loads of people on here gave me ideas i put into it. The drone itself died, but one day........ When i get a glow engine to power electric motors, i will come back to this.

then its there drone against mine .

The technology itself could really make a difference to people, as always its down to the intent of the user that makes the difference. if you think you could shoot one down, go on you tube, they do this as a sport with machine guns the lot!! Its actually really hard to shoot one down if the pilot or drone knows your trying to do it.

nsaspook

Where is that a pic of? what an amazing place!!! I would love to visit and photograph around there. Amazing picture