Like a Swarm of Lethal Bugs: The Most Terrifying Drone Video Yet | Hacker News Reader

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

theatlantic.com

63 pointsPhearTheCeal61 comments

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 even further out.

Have to disagree with this. This exact technology is operating right now, just not as small. The perception problem is the second hardest (behind power) but still totally possible. On a Raspi running at 800MHz one can get 5-10 fps while running intense vision algorithms. I'd say a micro multicopter with real CV capabilities is possible right now.

This is the disappointing part; every objectively impressive drone video I've seen has been controlled by a centralized computer with a bunch of cameras watching the drones and controlling them accordingly. Long way from group of drones that can fly anywhere and operate in any conditions.

Identifying power lines and people isn't necessarily as hard as you say. With a simple image, it's true machines can't match human perception. But when you take into account infrared for viewing human profiles, magnetic sensors for checking for power lines and the fact that the bots are mobile and can investigate and base their analysis on 3d space. The computational bang for your buck is also continuing to improve and sensors are continuing to get smaller. These systems aren't possible yet, but they may be in the relatively near future.

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 inclusion in this video was purely marketing fluff for the technically illiterate, thanks to its fancier-than-it-actually-is sounding nomenclature.

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.

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 mosquito nets, burqas and cheap radio jammers.

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.

1. I believe that was addressed in the video. These are very short range devices that can be recharged by solar energy or by sitting on power lines.

2. See the video.

3. You might be able to deny access to buildings with mosquito nets but you're not going to stop close range surveillance, painting targets and other uses. Mosquito nets themselves would be relatively trivial to dismantle with a swarm of these (you'd only need to land one with explosives on the net).

1. The short range is a killer. You already need to know where the bad guys are, within an area of a few blocks. And solar panels with such small form factor are a joke in comparison with the energy demands of powered flight. (Sure, there are solar powered drones, but they need huge wings, perfect weather, and are little more than powered gliders.)

2. I didn't see any good counter-arguments there. Care to detail.

3. Explosions will alert the building's occupants, and you just sacrificed a complex, expensive device for a $0.50 mosquito net.

Mosquito net: $5 Swarm of high-tech minidrones plus explosives: $??

A Faraday cage would nullify most of the advantages of the tech and can also be made relatively cheaply.

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.

Mosquitoes are an apt analogy: however, I don't think the analogy is to the detriment of legitimate fear of these.

Mosquitoes have not only overcome those technical obstacles, but thrived as a species. They even manage to kill millions of people a year, inadvertently. Obviously you can't sweep everything difficult about utilizing these bug-drones under the rug as just questions of implementation, but it's pretty clear that they're not inherently unfeasible.

We can't even build an amoeba, much less a mosquito. Heck, we can't even take an existing mosquito and make it fly where we want while transmitting video.

Inductive charging. And, in addition to dedicated stations, I understand there is work being done to enable this to occur parasitically, e.g. from power lines / distribution networks.

P.S. Looks like GiraffeNecktie beat me to this, in his comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5246511

"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.

What is this "we" you speak of?

Civilized humanity? As in the opposite to fundamentalists?

Yeah, not really. I'm a proud American citizen; I spent six years in the US Air Force. But I have no illusions as to our military, and the uses to which our Congress puts it, as representing "Civilized humanity, . . . the opposite to fundamentalists".

We spend about as much money as the rest of the World put together on our military, and have a force about equal to the rest of the World put together. This allows us to live in a unique position in history. We can assume our safety from the horrors most of humanity have experienced; we can go about our daily lives without concern for dire, hellish possibilities. It allows us to plan for, and save for, lesser emergencies only.

As a WASP male I am incredibly fortunate to live in the time and place I do. But we aren't somehow superior to our enemies because of this stroke of luck.

We are making investments into science and technology. For example, technology that protects biosphere on earth from complete extinction by an asteroid strike. Countries with fundamental regimes, generally do not. Good enough?

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.

Somehow this made me think of the Indiana Jones / Tomb Raider movies: In both if the protagonist simply stayed uninvolved the various artifacts would never have been found. It is often the way with US military (perhaps replace never with "not for much longer"): Most enemy and potential enemy designs and innovations are the direct result of espionage on the efforts of the US.

But sticking our heads in the sand is so comforting!

I believe most right thinking people in this world are terrified of the military power of the USA. Even I, being a US citizen, am starting to become very concerned with our military weapons and their usage as they seem far more likely to be turned on us then our enemies. Call me a nut job if you want but we are all just a proclamation away from being "domestic terrorists".

Yes, our military (I'm also a US citizen) has a whole lot of things that do bad, painful, often fatal things. They're scary for any number of reasons, one of which is certainly the possibility of their use against us.

However, this is in no way limited to the US. Many, many governments -- possibly most -- have similarly awful and destructive, if not as technologically advanced, ways to harm anyone and/or everyone in range.

It would make more sense to be afraid specifically of the US military if there were no one else out there throwing around this kind of power. As people who don't want to be shot at, blown up, or dissolved instantaneously by hordes of angry electrosquitoes, singling out the US as the main subject of our trepidation seems a bit arbitrary.

Instead of the current war/combative/investigative tasks that they have, I hereby demand all the drones be re-commissioned and given the following tasks:

- Keeping track of the forest cover and water resources

- Geographical surveys to identify use & misuse of resources

- Track and identify poachers and loggers

- In cities, keep an eye on the air pollution and particulate levels

- Identify factories emitting pollutants above the limits

- Tracking inclement weather

- Attend to humanitarian needs in disaster situations

Post-9/11 "counter-terrorism" has been almost entirely a pretext under which to develop domestic counter-insurgence. Future political instability is likely due to a number of factors and they may be preparing to maintain federal power in the face of this.

That is how see things as well.

You know what is terrifying? The deployment of any single military technology ever developed against one's person.

Yes. Just think about a sword. "You designed this tool specifically for hacking people apart!?"

This sounds quite wonderful --- for the open battlefield. I quite support the use of anything humane that can reasonably improve our soldiers' intel on the ground, as intelligence is everything in a war.

That said. I am terrified of the thought that this could be used against a country's own denizens, be it by the police, or by the military actively seeking out targets of their own. Furthermore, while this is being developed by a country that is actually quite high on the freedom and anticorruption graphs, what happens when either those countries become more of a dictatorship; or, more likely to happen soon, countries that very clearly violate human rights, or generally oppress their people get a hold of them?

It's sad that, when looking at a technology, you have to look at both, "Wow! This is incredible! We'll lose fewer lives on the battlefield, and our soldiers will come safe because we can avoid traps, etc!" as well as "... someday, these are going to be acceptable to point at our own people, in the interest of something that doesn't deserve such invasion of ... everything." Countries are not God, and it's scary when they start trying to recklessly wield such omniscience. I know I couldn't trust myself knowing all that these drones could offer. I'm not sure I could trust many, if anyone, with such knowledge.

I am really not sure why the inevitable conclusion is that the US will direct every bad technology against its own citizens. Does it not occur to anyone that they might be at least as likely to be attacked by non-governmental groups?

More US Citizens have been killed by the Federal Government than by any other organized group. The military has been involved with strike breaking [1]. The military was used to suppress the southern states from seceding from the union. [2] Say what you want about the horrors of slavery, but the southern states had the right to secede and were suppressed militarily. More recently, the President has suspended the 4th amendment, and, quite relevant to this article, authorized murder of US Citizens using drones.

These are facts. There's no leaping to conclusions here.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_the... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War#Causes_of_se...

I'm not sure the civil war is a good argument. If they seceded lawfully, they weren't citizens. If they weren't lawfully seceding, they were traitors/insurrectionists. In arms no less.

More germane might be the experiments at Oak Ridge.

Flying the Confederate flag isn't really an argument.

There's also a "Who is watching the watchers" mentality. Am I terribly concerned about the US Military using this tech? Not really, no. Am I concerned about the local police force infringing on my privacy by using these tools without a warrant, or worse, claiming that they shouldn't need a warrant before they use micro-spy drones? Yes. With the proper checks and balances in place, by all means, use powerful spy tools to track someone, but only that someone, etc.

I find it strange that nobody is concerned about militia groups, particularly when related groups have already demonstrated capabilities to (for example) carry out bombing attacks.

Or I would find it strange, if it were not so obvious that the agenda in focusing on the government is to advantage people like those militia groups

I personally, recreationally, have been building RC flying machines since the 70's, and have recently returned to the subject after a decade or so of torpor, with renewed vigor only a pair of growing sons can provide. My teenage young mind would asplode to know what my elderly hands are doing with the micro-tech that is, Thank the (Moores) Law, currently available.

So .. my kids took one look at this video, groaned about the CG, then sat down and started building their own versions out of some broken Amber2 parts we had laying on the repair bench.

The Pentagon might have the deployment desire figured out, but we hobbyists are already flying drones like this, hand-made, for peaceful and fun purposes. If this ever changes, we're going to be in for a rough ride .. my kids know how to recycle a DVD drive into working micro-planes that can carry camera parts: are they going to grow up in a world where knowing how to do such things without tacit approval will be illegal?

Someday we'll be fondly remembering with our leaders weren't all secluded deep indoors, behind EMP fields, or stuck riding around in popemobiles.

And a decade after that our children will roll their eyes when we tell them that we, their parents, used to walk around without wearing a Faraday suit, external EMP generators, and RA/LIDAR early-alert systems built into our goggles.

"Who knows? Sure, we have a technological advantage right now, but micro-drones sure seem like a disruptive technology that will eventually help rather than hinder attempts at asymmetric warfare."

Does this quote remind anyone else of the innovator's dilemma?

With the sound off, it could almost be a Lexx trailer.

With the sound on, it sounds as if it is marketed for 14-year-olds. Are military presentations actually like this? Makes me think we need more women in those positions.

I was wondering if they took their font from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, or if they both took it from the same place.

It reminded me of this rather amusing music video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UgGXo38Guc

Sure, but a lot of this is pure scifi at this point.

Black Hornet, in use by British forces, doesn't seem to be scifi on the other hand:

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

Probably not as much as you think. Who was it that just a few weeks ago was hired to specifically research and design this exact item?

really? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/02/flying-robots-nano-...

Yes, we have small flying robots. But off the top of my head, here are a few technologies mentioned in the video that we are not very close to:

1. Small wing-flapping robots that can adjust to wind gusts

2. Tiny, hybrid helicopter-birdplanes that magically don't spin when in rotor-mode, despite apparently having no anti-torque mechanism whatsoever. Also they look exactly like birds when perched and when flying.

3. Device that can harvest enough waste energy from vibrating machinery for powered flight (this one might be straight-up impossible)

It's a video game, folks. At best, it's psyops—what could be better than the enemy truly believing that you are all-seeing, wasting their time paranoidly looking around at pigeons and flies?

Have any of you ever heard a small flying machine in real life? They are very noisy.

If you try to "surveil" me in my hallway like that, I WILL hear your tiny wings flap, flap, flapping.

This is very true. Right now the only solution is to plant somewhere. But props / wings will become quieter as the systems become more efficient (think of a fan vs a DC motor prop).

Relevant novel by Stanislaw Lem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invincible

Direct link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0KbuE1z9_k