Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Pokémon Go Scans Trained the Navigation Tech for Military Drones

dronexl.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 334 posts

Re: Pokémon Go Scans Trained the Navigation Tech for Military Drones

#251

Post by doctorpangloss »

pj_mukh wrote: post #111

As someone who works in this space, the headline is a bit of a stretch. The overlap in the locations of Pokemon Go Player data and any active Drone heavy theaters of war is a tiny sliver (or zero?). The military contractor (Vantar/Maxar) in question basically admits so but just "reserves the right" to use the data which is the political battle line ala Claude and DoD. This is mostly an ideological battle.

Vantar: "None of these places in our training data are in active theaters of war!"

Also Vantar: "The superpower of generative AI is that data in one task generalizes to other tasks!"

Re: Pokémon Go Scans Trained the Navigation Tech for Military Drones

#252

Post by reaperducer »

krunck wrote: post #220
red-iron-pine wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

from 1 day ago: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2529849-fully-autonomou...

“We just launch it and we know everything will be dead – everything that will be found there in this particular area will be dead,” says Kokhanovskyy. “There is no connection to the drone at all, you cannot see the video, nothing… Everything it sees will be killed.” Because there are never any civilians caught in the middle of two warring armies, right? I think the ICC will be getting real busy soon.

I think the ICC will be getting real busy soon.

The ICC judges have less real-world power than a Pop Idol judge.

The ICC only works if every nation plays by the rules. Fewer and fewer do these days.

Re: Pokémon Go Scans Trained the Navigation Tech for Military Drones

#253

Post by ddejohn »

btbuildem wrote: post #182
pera wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember reading in the news that Pokémon Go was quite popular in Palestine. If GP has access to this dataset it would be interesting to know how sparse is the data in that area.

If the data was spatial - shapes and layouts of buildings and streets and such - that dataset is no longer current.

Deeply sickening that modern society is such that we have to make room in our brains for objectively outlandish connections like these. That a children's cartoon and game about cute little companions has to in any way be involved in the same sentence as the flattening of a city and genocide is just... pure insanity. The world has truly, collectively, lost its fucking mind.

Re: Pokémon Go Scans Trained the Navigation Tech for Military Drones

#254

Post by FrustratedMonky »

pj_mukh wrote: post #111

As someone who works in this space, the headline is a bit of a stretch. The overlap in the locations of Pokemon Go Player data and any active Drone heavy theaters of war is a tiny sliver (or zero?). The military contractor (Vantar/Maxar) in question basically admits so but just "reserves the right" to use the data which is the political battle line ala Claude and DoD. This is mostly an ideological battle.

""As someone who works in this space, the headline is a bit of a stretch. The overlap in the locations of Pokemon Go Player data and any active Drone heavy theaters of war is a tiny sliver (or zero?).""

Can you elaborate?

GPS can be faulty in cities.

Pokémon Go scans, are primarily in cities.

The mapping in the article, is specifically saying to use visual cues when GPS is faulty.

How is this not directly 1-1 overlapping, the gap and the solution.

Re: Pokémon Go Scans Trained the Navigation Tech for Military Drones

#255

Post by iwontberude »

idiotsecant wrote: post #206
drfloyd51 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The overlap in the locations of Pokemon Go Player data and any active Drone heavy theaters of war is a tiny sliver. Currently active theaters. And now there are detailed locations of our cities. We might not get killbots today but we will get pacificationbots.

Yep, the autocracies of the past only resolved when the ruling machinery needed something from the population. They needed farmers, workers, soldiers, etc. There are clear parallels in the modern world of societies when the ruling machinery doesn't need those things from their population - petrostates. The people in these states tend to be viewed as subjects, not citizens. That's where we are headed A corporate counc…

Hopefully they will let us live comfortably like pets as sterile creatures that will slowly die out and not be replaced. This could limit human misery in the future.

Re: Pokémon Go Scans Trained the Navigation Tech for Military Drones

#256

Post by KaiserPro »

drfloyd51 wrote: post #154
pj_mukh wrote: post #111

As someone who works in this space, the headline is a bit of a stretch. The overlap in the locations of Pokemon Go Player data and any active Drone heavy theaters of war is a tiny sliver (or zero?). The military contractor (Vantar/Maxar) in question basically admits so but just "reserves the right" to use the data which is the political battle line ala Claude and DoD. This is mostly an ideological battle.

> The overlap in the locations of Pokemon Go Player data and any active Drone heavy theaters of war is a tiny sliver. Currently active theaters. And now there are detailed locations of our cities. We might not get killbots today but we will get pacificationbots.

No, because they are different things for different purposes.

Visual navigation is prone to degradation. Keeping the "map" updated requires constant visits. (I know because my team worked on the patent for a method for updating said maps.)

Also Pacification bot would be run by the military who most lilkey have GPS.

Finally, For ground based bots, SLAM is actually more useful, rather than pre-built map based navigation.

Re: Pokémon Go Scans Trained the Navigation Tech for Military Drones

#257

Post by iwontberude »

pj_mukh wrote: post #196
beAbU wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure Pokemon Go and Ingress was played in Kiev long before the war

Good thing we’re not selling this data to the Russians?

Yeah they just exfiltrated it for free.

Re: Pokémon Go Scans Trained the Navigation Tech for Military Drones

#259

Post by iwontberude »

Nvidia wants to create a digital twin of the real world that military can use to plan their next military operations. All of those scans of cities and inside buildings will be a virtual world where war makers can plan to a very fine detail how their drones will behave.

Re: Pokémon Go Scans Trained the Navigation Tech for Military Drones

#260

Post by KaiserPro »

pj_mukh wrote: post #165
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The overlap in the locations of Pokemon Go Player data and any active Drone heavy theaters of war is a tiny sliver (or zero?). But presumably the images/models at ground level can be used to train/improve the general performance of Vantor's aerial (satelite based) navigation system so it works better elsewhere?

No the tech doesn’t work like that AFAIK. The most common use case is exactly localization (think “HD maps” for autonomous cars). It almost 1-1 data correlation, n-phone Pokémon go scans of a location helping a drone locate itself in the same location in correlation with Maxar’s satellite data. There maybe some hyper corner case uses. Maybe the billion scans in New York City help them generalize across different phon…

Your hypothesis is correct.

there was a startup that pitched the idea of using Satellite data to do ground based navigation. (https://sturfee.com/vps) they didn't get bought out by either google, niantic or facebook, so it can't of worked that well.

Niantic's stuff is a pre-built map that the client will reference to get a position. Its essentially a massive feature matching exercise. The problem with using airborn photos is that you miss a bunch of features you can't see. (samy thing trying to match ground features from the air.)

THe lens calibration issue isn't actually that much of a problem _for the client_. if you have a rough idea of the lens (exif data really helps there) then you can still get meter accurate (and a few degrees heading) its a bit more of a problem for generating the initial map, but Structure from motion with good motion priors goes a long way to make it less of a problem

Now, Niantic are proposing that you can train a model that can relocalize generally without a detailed map, I think thats a bit far fetch, especially to do at any large scale. (ie bigger than a cubic kilometer)

Post reply on HN