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Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

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Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#331

Post by CommanderData »

dash2 wrote: post #313
CommanderData wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The asylum seeker comparison is interesting. While I want to reduce the number, I can't but help think how we essentially create them in the first place by destroying the countries which create the economic conditions they flee from.

Asylum seekers are not fleeing bad economic conditions, or at least they are claiming not to. Also, we didn't create refugees from Syria or Ukraine - Syria and Russia did.

Not entirely, I think western powers had much more involvement then you have summarized.

Destabilising a country, causing military coups, arming rebel forces all play a part.

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#332

Post by pacetest »

genewitch wrote: post #328
pacetest wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fundamentally different, it's using an RL trained network that gets the drone state (position, orientation, velocity) as input and directly outputs motor commands.

Do you happen to know the bandwidth of the telemetry fed to the network? How many bytes/s.

Not much since it doesn't take images as it's input and it's running on an embedded mcu. Based on the papers linked elsewhere in here the state vector is 24 floats and it's running at 1kHz so around 100 kB/s.

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#333

Post by [deleted] »

bri3d wrote: post #324
walrus01 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which is present on the drone and use direct IMU input and ESC commands from the Jetson Does the jetson board even have the appropriate UARTs on it to talk directly to the ESCs? Your typical hobby grade 5" class size ESC (either 4-in-1 or discrete) cannot talk to two different controllers at the same time. If it's already wired to the four UART outputs from a 30x30 size flight controller (such as something STM32H7…

Right, that was my point about the physical layout not really being conducive to NN-driven stabilization, on my cursory read. Digging in, you could probably bitbang DShot on Orin GPIOs. It would be really sketchy since it's presumably running Linux on out-of-order cores with giant cache, so there's nothing close to realtime going on, but it's so damn fast that the theoretical problem probably doesn't matter and I bet…

[deleted]

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#334

Post by pacetest »

bri3d wrote: post #324
walrus01 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which is present on the drone and use direct IMU input and ESC commands from the Jetson Does the jetson board even have the appropriate UARTs on it to talk directly to the ESCs? Your typical hobby grade 5" class size ESC (either 4-in-1 or discrete) cannot talk to two different controllers at the same time. If it's already wired to the four UART outputs from a 30x30 size flight controller (such as something STM32H7…

Right, that was my point about the physical layout not really being conducive to NN-driven stabilization, on my cursory read. Digging in, you could probably bitbang DShot on Orin GPIOs. It would be really sketchy since it's presumably running Linux on out-of-order cores with giant cache, so there's nothing close to realtime going on, but it's so damn fast that the theoretical problem probably doesn't matter and I bet…

Its not just a stabilization/rate control loop but the NN does both guidance and control. It is an MLP that takes state + upcoming gate positions/waypoints and controls the motors directly. I.e. there is no explicit path planning going on but rather the NN outputs motor commands that hopefully help the drone traverse the given waypoints in minimum time. I think this is quite cool because running a similar Optimal Control MPC setup is really not at all feasible on a normal STM32H7 Flight controller, especially at 1kHz.

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#335

Post by CamperBob2 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #327
CamperBob2 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What countermeasures exist against a swarm of autonomous drones, other than an EMP weapon? (Other than CIWS, because nothing like that can be used on land.)

> (Other than CIWS, because nothing like that can be used on land.) Someone should tell the US, UK, Israel, and Australia (all of whom operate the Centurion C-RAM/Land Phalanx Weapon System) [0] that that land-based CIWS system, and any potential similar system, cannot be used on land. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centurion_C-RAM

Well, if you're defending a fortress on the edge of an empty desert, or fighting in somebody else's back yard, I suppose exceptions can be made. But how could you possibly use something like that in a populated area? Do you think they are going to mount those on the White House roof? (Wait, never mind, don't answer that...)

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#336

Post by bri3d »

pacetest wrote: post #334
bri3d wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, that was my point about the physical layout not really being conducive to NN-driven stabilization, on my cursory read. Digging in, you could probably bitbang DShot on Orin GPIOs. It would be really sketchy since it's presumably running Linux on out-of-order cores with giant cache, so there's nothing close to realtime going on, but it's so damn fast that the theoretical problem probably doesn't matter and I bet…

Its not just a stabilization/rate control loop but the NN does both guidance and control. It is an MLP that takes state + upcoming gate positions/waypoints and controls the motors directly. I.e. there is no explicit path planning going on but rather the NN outputs motor commands that hopefully help the drone traverse the given waypoints in minimum time. I think this is quite cool because running a similar Optimal Con…

Oh, I see how this works now! That's _incredibly_ clever, not at _all_ what I would have guessed, and quite innovative. Thank you so much for taking the time to post these explanations.

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#337

Post by ben_w »

AngryData wrote: post #282
pjc50 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A fast explosive on the back of a neodynium magnet and a few coils of copper can make a hell of an EMP blast. I'm having a hard time believing this is effective. > The only reason we don't use them now is due to all the collateral damage Russians don't care about collateral damage and there doesn't seem to be any evidence of them using such weapons?

Nobody really uses much undirected EM warfare in my opinion because it represents a huge escalation in a war, similar to the use of indiscriminate chemical weapons, or even nuclear weapons. It would be devastating in the local battlefield, potentially frying radio or other equipment depending on the size of the device or how close you could lob it towards the enemy before going off; but with the low wattages many non…

An EMP large enough to be an international incident is a nuclear explosion. The effective range of one pumped by a conventional explosive is very small.

For undirected EMPs, consider that a lightning strike is in the region of about 5 gigajoules, and the difficulty of pumping that much energy through a coil.

My expectation is that a CHAMP warhead (not missile, warhead) would have a EMP range of something under 300m (probably less), even then vs. unshielded electronics (compare the effect on your body of being in a car that's struck by lightning vs. being on a 100m away on an open field that's struck by lightning), and only even that much by having a high gain (highly directional) antenna: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-electronics_High_Power...

That said:

> but with the low wattages many non-military communication devices use today you would also be blasting horrible noise to all of them beyond the local area and disrupting communications across potentially multiple neutral countries.

This doesn't need an EMP, it's "just" jamming, and Russia (amongst others) already does this: https://gpsjam.org/?lat=50.32113&lon=41.41602&z=3.0&date=202...

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#338

Post by ben_w »

energy123 wrote: post #117
jandrese wrote: 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.

All hard countered by a laser like the Iron Beam, no? Unless there's a hard counter to the hard counter?

> Unless there's a hard counter to the hard counter?

Two opposing Iron Beam lasers pointed at the allied one?

But also, low-flying drones using ground cover to get close, and in the final approach attack from multiple angles at the same time so it physically cannot rotate fast enough to reach all targets before impact — if it has a maximum 180° rotation time of 0.2 seconds, and the attacking drone has a terminal speed of 100m/s (~224 mph), the last 20 meters has to be clear of all cover, including the soldiers who are operating the Iron Beam and might find their bodies being kept between the drones and the laser itself until the last moment.

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#339

Post by ben_w »

SoftTalker wrote: post #242
wongarsu wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or attack while it rains. Sure, a laser is great for defending Southern California or a place in the Middle East, but not so great for defending Great Britain

Rain probably adds a fair degree of difficulty for the drones themselves, though?

Would it? I'd expect gusty wind to be a bigger issue than rain.

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#340

Post by SergeAx »

IshKebab wrote: post #247
pjc50 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Missed that news; https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/britain-p... I think we're already deep into large-scale drone warfare. Destroying a third of the enemy heavy bomber fleet is pretty substantial. It feels to me like that attack operated like Pearl Harbor, a marker that the old way of surface naval warfare / air attack was being replaced by a new one. Don't forget that Russia has their own drones. T…

$4k per drone... ouch.

Current price of a 155mm artillery shell (risen from $2k before 2023).
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