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Comment by nl | Hacker News Reader

I think a fair number of nation-states would be willing to pay a lot of money for a version of this system they didn't have to program themselves. And had more firepower, of course.

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A low number of false positives with a water pistol is an impressive engineering feat. A low number of false positives with an actual gun is a disaster. The technology is still a long way off.

Accurate sensing, the ability to accurately distinguish between combatants[1] and non-combatants, seems to be an almost impossible task. While there are robots in active service today they all have a human involved somewhere, especially if there's lethal force going to be used.

It's pretty scary to think that humans could be removed from that loop. I can't work out why I'm happy to see totally autonomous cars but I'm wary about autonomous weapons.

(http://rusi.org/downloads/assets/23sharkey.pdf)

(http://andrewgibsondefence.wordpress.com/2010/10/17/should-k...)

[1] And even if you can identify an enemy combatant you've got to then distinguish active combatants from those who have surrendered or are injured or are mentally ill.

It's not a problem for counter-sniping and no man's land.

No man's land control and anti-air defense is exactly what I saw such solutions marketed for, when browsing through drone tech last year.

I disagree. Accidentally shooting a couple of kids or pregnant women every few weeks can easily make you lose a war on the political front.

In a few priviledged parts of the world.

They already have them:

http://www.gizmag.com/korea-dodamm-super-aegis-autonomos-rob...

I think a number of terrorists are going to be willing to figure out how to hook such a system up to a gun on a $300 RC quadrocopter. I hope it's a small number. It's going to be interesting.

Are you serious? Do you honestly think a $300 RC quadrocopter can handle the kick of a gun?

Does it need to be able to fire more than once?

A properly designed muzzle brake will reduce the kick by 50%, potentially making the recoil small enough that your quadcopter could handle it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzzle_brake

There are a number of very low-recoil guns in existence. There was even a video a few years back of a group of friends who mounted a paintball gun to a quadrocopter. So yes.

Having fired real guns and paintball guns, I can tell can you this proves absolutely nothing.

heh that's actually an interesting problem, it would depend on how many times the gun needs to fire, also how stable can the copter be as it fires? if it only needs to get one shot off then you're good(but then it'd be more practical to load the thing with explosives, ugh that idea gives me nightmares) maybe some sort of dual gyroscopic stabilizer like a camera coupled with opposing barrels as some one mentioned, but using blanks instead of live ammo?

How about some real world experiments: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59ttSwYNspw Disclaimer: I have nothing to do with this. Just found it one night strolling around on YouTube..

opposing barrels fired simultaneously might work, though it would be a bit wasteful.

This is a well understood problem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recoilless_rifle

I don't think so... Where is all your extra energy going?

In roughly equal and opposite directions. You'd just need something between the two weapons to withstand the compressive force.

"In roughly equal and opposite directions" sounds like you think energy cancels other energy like opposing forces do. The energy needs to go somewhere; it can't bump into MORE energy and disappear. What would this "something" that absorbs all of it be?

I'll bet it can handle a 22 short.

A terrorist with a bomb is a threat. Terrorists with rickety flying .22s... That would just be fun to watch!

Stampedes due to a gun being fired in the middle of a crowd are not fun to watch. Terrorists aren't out to do such things though; surprisingly, they have other goals than causing random terror. Psychopaths on the other hand...

Exactly. Terrorists trying to fight a war with flying .22s would be pathetic. They would never get even 1 shot in before the thing is taken down. I think a few people downvoting me and/or posting about the threat these things might cause don't really understand the state of this technology and/or basic physics.

We weren't talking about psychopaths. Everything is a threat in the hands of a psychopath. Give a psychopath a spoon and I'd still be worried.

The definition of terrorist seems to have shifted. It used to refer to someone intent on fomenting terror in a population, but you seem to be using it to talk about soldiers in a combat situation.

You answer your own question with "It used to refer to...". But even so, I still don't think a flying .22 will cause "terror". Planes crashing into buildings in big cities and killing 3000 people causes "terror".

I actually believe there is a growing market for something like low frills drones. Somewhat a T34/Kalashnikov of all drones, that is short ranged, maybe with FPV, something that anyone, who can use who is able to understand a joystick and three buttons is able to command. There should be a decent market for this stuff with all kinds of crazy 3rd world militias thinking they need to drone-up, plus these things should be relatively easy to export.

Guns have recoil. Grenades don't.

Also the targeting issues are vastly simplified and they're very effective in swarms.

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