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Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

tudelft.nl

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Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#22
post #6

I man at this point, given what we know I'm sure someone smart can connect some dots and describe what's inevitable with 99% confidence just in the next year or two in terms of society right?

The only question is whether motors or propellers will be banned for private sale first. (After drones themselves, of course.)

Why? Just request a Waymo, and then put your suitcase nuke in the backseat and watch it be delivered by AI. There's all sorts of ways to kill with AI without needing drones

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#23
post #4

This is only a few days after the massive drone attack in Russia. Only a matter of time until we have drones smart enough to dodge bullets (or at least dodge out of where guns are pointing) while flying at breakneck speeds being controlled by AIs we don't fully understand. The tech industry is working hard to bring about the Terminator future.

This is portrayed in Ministry for the Future which describes AI controlled swarms of small drones/bombs that fly apart and come together at their target and are almost impossible to stop.

Fantastic book, highly recommended.

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#24
post #4

This is only a few days after the massive drone attack in Russia. Only a matter of time until we have drones smart enough to dodge bullets (or at least dodge out of where guns are pointing) while flying at breakneck speeds being controlled by AIs we don't fully understand. The tech industry is working hard to bring about the Terminator future.

OTOH there's no mass adoption of autonomous drones after 3+ years of real active war between two technologically advanced nations.

[dead]

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#26
This is quite cool since past efforts in this direction have usually relied on crutches like outside-in imaging and positioning.

A few details I picked up:

* The drones are a spec drone across the league. It's a fairly large-footprint FPV racing drone (it's a 5" propped drone, but it's very stretched out and quite heavy) with both a Betaflight flight controller and a Jetson Orin NX onboard. Teams were only allowed an IMU and a single forward camera.

* It's unclear to me whether the teams were allowed to bypass the typical Betaflight flight controller which is present on the drone and use direct IMU input and ESC commands from the Jetson, or whether they were sending and receiving commands from the flight controller and relying on its onboard rate stabilization PID loop.

DCL is kind of a weird drone racing league since it's made for TV; it's mostly simulator based with, more recently, only few real events a year. The spec DCL drone isn't very capable compared to the more open-specification drones in racing leagues like MultiGP, in large part to keep the events more spectator friendly. This probably makes it more amenable to AI, which is an interesting side effect.

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#27
post #5

Oh man, can anyone imagine a non-Terminator scenario for this? Update: I'm not saying people shouldn't develop this, we're never going to squash human curiosity. But when I see this kind of stuff, I'm deeply troubled by how bad actors (state and non-state) will use this. I hope our security services are working hard on countering these potential threats.

very prompt burrito delivery?

In china probably very soon. In the US? Regulation has already killed that.

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#28
post #5

Oh man, can anyone imagine a non-Terminator scenario for this? Update: I'm not saying people shouldn't develop this, we're never going to squash human curiosity. But when I see this kind of stuff, I'm deeply troubled by how bad actors (state and non-state) will use this. I hope our security services are working hard on countering these potential threats.

very prompt burrito delivery?

If by burrito you mean shaped charge high explosives with lethal shrapnel, triggered by facial recognition, delivered by drones the size of house sparrows at the speed of sound, then yes, burrito delivery.

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#29
post #26

This is quite cool since past efforts in this direction have usually relied on crutches like outside-in imaging and positioning. A few details I picked up: * The drones are a spec drone across the league. It's a fairly large-footprint FPV racing drone (it's a 5" propped drone, but it's very stretched out and quite heavy) with both a Betaflight flight controller and a Jetson Orin NX onboard. Teams were only allowed an…

From near the bottom:

> One of the core new elements of the drone’s AI is the use of a deep neural network that doesn’t send control commands to a traditional human controller, but directly to the motors.

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#30
Looks like most of the comments here are about the use as weapons and the possible dangers. I believe "Slaughterbots" is the canonical sci-fi video on the subject, and it appears to be aging pretty well. Unfortunately…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-2tpwW0kmU

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