

When The Drones Come Marching In - solipsist
http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/29/drones/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

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stcredzero
That embedded video is the most delightful thing I've seen linked to from HN
for months. I can see new robosports coming out of this. It has a lot of
visual appeal, more so than Battlebots, which sometimes looked clumsy and
sometimes would sometimes turn out to be endless trading of ineffectual bumps
and taps.

By scaling down to tri and quad-rotors, one simultaneously gets the excitement
of flight (and crashes) with the potential for more visually interesting
weaponry.

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nickpinkston
I'm completely with you, and it could be a great way to get the public
interested in (i.e. funding) technology. It reminds me of when auto racing
actually led to improvements for street cars. I mean kids already love various
robotic cartoons - who wouldn't love the same as a real-life game. Attendance
could be a little dangerous though...

Let's hope UPenn's QuadRotor Lab is in the running.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvRTALJp8DM>

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stcredzero
A complete enclosed plexiglass arena plus some weight limits and munitions
regulations should be enough to keep it safe.

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nickpinkston
Yea - sounds right to me. Perhaps even kill targets on the vehicles to limit?
I'd think we'd get to unkillable bots pretty quickly with aerial ones - maybe
I'm wrong though. Reminds me of the spinning blade bots that seemed
indestructible...

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stcredzero
Only the well engineered spinning blade bots (like Ziggo) were nigh
indestructible.

I think a lot of this could be addressed by adding ground targets to go after
or protect. I can also imagine lots of munitions which would be hard to just
shrug off or dodge, like nylon nets or lasers hitting photocells rigged as
cutoff-switches.

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tomjen3
The thing that gets me is that the US is using these to assassinate people in
Pakistan and Afghanistan, some by firring hellfire missiles at the targets.

Yet the same UAV have got to be useful to kill the president of the US (I do
not have any desire to kill him, but I imagine there are people who do).

So, how the hell do you protect somebody against these kinds of weapons? The
bullet-proof glass that is (almost certainly) installed in the oval office is
properly enough to stop any kind of sniper bullet, but a missile? Heck the
Iranians have anti-ship missiles that can fly at march 2.

How do you stop something like that? I have to guess that the Secret Service
have tried, but I doubt it can be done.

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fraserharris
They still have a radar signature. You stop them (in principle) the same way
you stop all enemy aircraft.

~~~
bobds
Smaller UAVs might be hard to recognize among birds and other clutter. And you
can probably apply some stealth technology to increase your chances of staying
undetected.

As far as assasination machines go, an insect-sized UAV with a tiny dose of
poison would be hard to beat.

~~~
stcredzero
One the size of a large bird could park itself on a glass window, then
detonate a shaped charge that could send a jet of superhot plasma through the
bulletproof glass and kill a person.

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johngalt
For a while I've wondered how effective a swarm of drones would be against
something like an F-16. With the idea that a bunch of cheap drones en masse
would be more effective as a group. But I looked up the costs and realized the
larger drones cost almost the same as an F-16.

Humans are surprisingly cheap and effective machines themselves.

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barrkel
Drones are much cheaper in a more important respect - human lives. When wars
can be fought with machines, leaders don't need to pay as much attention to
democratic will when choosing who to attack.

~~~
jacquesm
> Drones are much cheaper in a more important respect - human lives.

Typically drones are used against targets that are human, I don't see the
drones causing less loss of life.

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barrkel
I don't think leaders think of their enemies as human. I don't think they
could sleep at night if they did.

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hallmark
Related story here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2155845>

I prefer the related story - it links directly to the project page for said
awesome video. It skips the scatterbrained TC commentary and adds a few
details, such as the mechanism (no spoiler here..) for igniting the fireworks!

Too bad much of the interesting discussion is already in this news item.

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harryh
My gf got me one of the AR.Drones for christmas, and I have to say that it is,
by far, the best nerd toy I've ever had. Seriously, it's remarkable.

If you, at all, are thinking about getting one go for it. You'll love it.

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presidentender
How's the durability?

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harryh
I've definitely rammed it into a wall or some other barrier a couple dozen
times and it's still ok. I'm sure I'll end up having to replace a blade at
some point but I hear this is relatively straight forward.

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orangewarp
When we think about drones we talk a lot about military operations. Sometimes
I hear stuff on rescue but the theme is usually "tasks dangerous for people."
I thought it would be interesting to think 100 years in the future when drones
permeate everyday life and are used for the routine and mundane also. What
will drones be doing then? I'd like to hear some of HN's most clever,
outrageous, imaginative, but mostly, entertaining ideas. :-)

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sototally
When the drones come marching _in_ we'll have domestic drones (like those
agile quadropters). They'll live and charge up on the top shelf, periodically
taking off to photograph our stuff so it can be recognised and indexed. Easier
to find car keys and books.

And maybe we could use them outside to clear the guttering (that's got to be
worth $100 a year).

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stcredzero
There's already a gutter clearing robot.

[http://store.irobot.com/family/index.jsp?ab=CMS_IRBT_100909&...](http://store.irobot.com/family/index.jsp?ab=CMS_IRBT_100909&categoryId=2878870&s=D-StorePrice-
IRBT)

A large quadrotor to deliver this to the gutter would be very useful, though.

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solipsist
I have to say, when I first saw the embedded video I was sure I was looking at
some augmented reality game for the iPhone. The video from the drone's
perspective is close to mind-blowing. There is so many possibilities for
drones like these...let's just hope we choose the applications wisely.

~~~
queensnake
Yeah I know - probably little ARM chips are light enough and cheap enough to
do the image processing shown, on-board, although whether that was actually
done live or added after in the video, who knows.

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jacquesm
Don't miss the video at the bottom!

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rabbitonrails
This is the coolest tech video I have ever seen.

