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Like a Swarm of Lethal Bugs: The Most Terrifying Drone Video Yet

theatlantic.com

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Re: Like a Swarm of Lethal Bugs: The Most Terrifying Drone Video Yet

#61

Post by nathan_long »

gnosis wrote: post #32
hnriot wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but those problems were just talked about, not solved. This is the US government we're talking about, so I bet they will never get far, and by the time they have something operational, you'll be able to but something 10x better on Amazon.

"This is the US government we're talking about, so I bet they will never get far" Oh? You mean the US government that was the first to create nuclear weapons and land men on the moon?

The US government also envisioned and funded the development of computer networking (though the actual work was done by companies), so it's ironic for someone to imply the government can't innovate on an internet forum.

I say this as someone who's basically libertarian.

Re: Like a Swarm of Lethal Bugs: The Most Terrifying Drone Video Yet

#62

Post by nathan_long »

arbuge wrote: post #22

"When I watch that simulation I am horrified. I also think to myself, this technology is more likely to diminish American security than to enhance it." Quite so, but that's no argument for the US not working on it anyway. The enemy will have it eventually no matter what. We might as well have it too.

I find your argument both compelling and horrifying. Especially thinking as a citizen, where the "we" is my government, which employs many, many people, not all of whom are trustworthy.

Re: Like a Swarm of Lethal Bugs: The Most Terrifying Drone Video Yet

#64

Post by ctdonath »

zeteo wrote: post #12

These are about as practicable as developing lightsabers. They are: 1. Difficult to build. It's proving incredibly hard to achieve any decent range for electrical road vehicles. This multiplies manifold when trying to cram components into a much smaller space and make the whole thing fly . 2. Difficult to control. Gusts of wind, predatory birds, reliable bandwidth etc. 3. Trivially easy to defend against. Think mosqu…

10 years ago, cramming an HDTV in your pocket with Cray 2 supercomputer processing power and 10x T1 wireless bandwidth was laughably absurd.

They're building these "bug" micro-drones now. They're doable, they're being done, just a few years to get amazing capabilities implemented.

Re: Like a Swarm of Lethal Bugs: The Most Terrifying Drone Video Yet

#65

Post by [deleted] »

karpathy wrote: post #31

Just in case someone is wondering, we are not even remotely close to technology like this. The control problem is very hard, but the perception problem perhaps even harder, Especially when most of the processing needs to be done onboard because you need the perception to be part of the control loop and work at reasonably high frequencies. Higher-level perception tasks such as identifying power lines or people are eve…

[deleted]

Re: Like a Swarm of Lethal Bugs: The Most Terrifying Drone Video Yet

#66

Post by [deleted] »

karpathy wrote: post #31

Just in case someone is wondering, we are not even remotely close to technology like this. The control problem is very hard, but the perception problem perhaps even harder, Especially when most of the processing needs to be done onboard because you need the perception to be part of the control loop and work at reasonably high frequencies. Higher-level perception tasks such as identifying power lines or people are eve…

[deleted]

Re: Like a Swarm of Lethal Bugs: The Most Terrifying Drone Video Yet

#68

Post by IheartApplesDix »

scoot wrote: post #58
IheartApplesDix wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, there is commercially available optical flow sensors available today.

I laughed when I heard the reference to optical flow sensors, like somehow strapping an optical mouse sensor (albeit with appropriate lens technology) to the bottom of a drone somehow solves all the sensing and control problemthin loved in bringing this technology to the mainstream. An optical flow sensor has very limited utility; it's possibly the least useful of all the sensors you could add to a UAV. It's inclusio…

Obviously, Optical flow sensors are a bit more complicated than mouse sensors, (although similar). Optical flow is very similar to how insects judge their relative location, and it's a critical component in existing advanced drone technology, early in application, but almost a decade old in theory.
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