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Drones that can haul a 20-pound load for 500 miles and land on a moving target

cnbc.com

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Re: Drones that can haul a 20-pound load for 500 miles and land on a moving target

#51

Post by ganzuul »

boxcardavin wrote: post #24
cyrux004 wrote: post #3

It makes me happy to see that people are venturing out and building something that takes longer and has a higher failure rate that web apps/software.

Yes, nothing is more depressing than listening to the a16z podcasts where they're discussing the minutiae of well-established b2b saas strategies for capturing long tail revenue. Shit, let's build some robots instead.

This is why I quit IT to become a machinist. Now seeing how starved manufacturing is for talent, I suspect IT 'easy' money is a huge brain-drain on society.

Re: Drones that can haul a 20-pound load for 500 miles and land on a moving target

#54

Post by woodman »

beagle3 wrote: post #41
candiodari wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, that's cute. The issue with that is that locating UAV's that are, say 50 meters above the deck, more than 1km from your detector is essentially impossible. Without a VERY dense detection infrastructure, catching these things is not going to happen. Furthermore even though these lasers are very cheap, by army norms, to fire, they're still 600$ or so for a single shot. So shooting down drones will be expensive. Fa…

> Without a VERY dense detection infrastructure, catching these things is not going to happen. Not really, Where it matters, radars have been deployed that can easily find those things. I've seen live demonstrations in the mid 1980s (as in, a system protecting borders), and I bet the state of the art has advanced since then. IIRC it was a SAR system, but I'm not sure. > Furthermore even though these lasers are very c…

> I've seen live demonstrations in the mid 1980s (as in, a system protecting borders), and I bet the state of the art has advanced since then.

Yup, long stare SAR hooked up to a DVR was a thing over 10 years ago - it could cover a lot of ground (like a large Iraqi city) with a resolution that would easily detect this drone.

Re: Drones that can haul a 20-pound load for 500 miles and land on a moving target

#55

Post by blfr »

daveguy wrote: post #2

Technology like this is why The Wall is a waste of money when it comes to deterring drug trafficking.

I doubt this is true. There is a readily available technology for beating greylisting for example. Any semi-configured mail server can do it. Yet greylisting alone stops majority of spam.

I expect the same effect for drug or people trafficking. While no barrier will stop everyone, and there are already drones and submarines designed for crossing well-protected borders, even fairly simple obstacles will stop or deter the majority of traffickers.

Re: Drones that can haul a 20-pound load for 500 miles and land on a moving target

#56

Post by Broken_Hippo »

haberman wrote: post #28

What 20 pound load could have saved the Titanic? Why wouldn't such a miraculous tool or part have been brought aboard already as a precaution?

At the time, probably nothing. At best they could have sent out life jackets or something similar, though I don't know how much they weighed at the time.

But if that happened today, we could minimally start getting inflatable lifeboats out to the people, supplementing afterwards with blankets for heat, life preservers, food, and so on. If you kept some on the ship in a slightly similar tragedy, the drones could offship as the sinking is happening and then immediately deliver goods to survivors. This last option seems more useful.

Re: Drones that can haul a 20-pound load for 500 miles and land on a moving target

#60

Post by bjoli »

ShorsHammer wrote: post #15
daveguy wrote: post #2

Technology like this is why The Wall is a waste of money when it comes to deterring drug trafficking.

Jamming drones is easier than you think, the new battleground will be autonomous flying to avoid trivial radio/gps jamming. MIT has open source code for this already. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qah8oIzCwk https://github.com/andybarry/flight

How about going low tech and just use gyroscopes to keep steady and fly in a straight line until it is unlikely that any jamming might occur?
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