
Darpa shows off 1.8-gigapixel drone, can spot a person from 20K feet - Libertatea
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/146909-darpa-shows-off-1-8-gigapixel-surveillance-drone-can-spot-a-terrorist-from-20000-feet?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=darpa-shows-off-1-8-gigapixel-surveillance-drone-can-spot-a-terrorist-from-20000-feet
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achille
Some context: ARGUS was critical in winning the war in Iraq. It was the
critical centerpiece of Task Force ODIN, and they set it up in hotspots to
monitor 24/7.

Once a roadside IED bomb was detected, they rewound the video, tracked the
person who setup the bomb, then tracked that person back to the supplier for
the IED/Financials. ODIN killed about ~3000 in Iraq and at least ~1000 in
Afghanistan See:
[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1142211...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114221171)

Argus is now obsolete, they had a replacement RFP back in 2009.
[http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/08/new-army-camera-
prom...](http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/08/new-army-camera-promises-
total-surveillance/)

Also a quick note, the aircraft had a 274 mbit/s uplink for streaming the live
feeds.

Edit: Fixed 27/7

~~~
Irishsteve
Impressive. Can't wait until it's put into day to day life for tracking UPS /
DHL deliveries.

~~~
fghh45sdfhr3
Or marihuana smokers and dealers. But not alcohol or tobacco sellers.

~~~
stcredzero
Yeah, that guy who dealt marihuana on rollerblades in NYC could get tracked in
a sting operation which would also _catch most of his customers_. All they'd
have to do is to "tail" him with such a device over a month.

Right now, it would be way too expensive to devote such a system to catch one
dealer, but the scary thing is that systems like this could surveil and
process entire regions/neighborhoods as a batch, and the expense of doing so
is driven by the cost of communications and processing power. However, we know
those costs are going to go down. From this, we should be able to estimate the
time when large metropolitan police departments will be able to afford such
capabilities.

That gives a concrete deadline for interested parties who wish to act.

EDIT: To clarify -- that would be a deadline for _when it will be too late_
not a deadline for _when to safely act by_!

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hooande
There are a LOT of very useful things that drones can do. A short list:

    
    
      * delivering food
      * scouting location based markets
      * observing weather patterns
      * optimizing traffic flow/stop lights
      * crowd management
      * emergency relief
    

Entire startups could be built around the gathering and analysis of visual
data from drones. A lot of businesses can a benefit from a little bit of being
in the right place at the right time, and some business are only possible with
reliable real time information. Imagine the applications to all kinds of
businesses if they could put a 24 hour, 10,000 foot tail on their rivals. It
won't be long before these drones have the ability to read a piece of paper
from thousands of feet away.

From a machine learning perspective, I see drones as flying data factories. So
much can be learned and predicted based on the movements of people, animals
and low pressure systems. The level of "eyes on" analysis provided by drones
can really improve a lot of key technologies. Privacy will be an issue of
course, along with the logistics of many flying machines in the same air
space. Smart cities of the future will operate their own drones and charge a
subscription to the data feed for businesses.

I think it's definitely work watching the PBS Nova episode about drones [1]. I
walked away thinking about the implications of 10 years of advancement in this
field.

[1] [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/military/rise-of-the-
drones.htm...](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/military/rise-of-the-drones.html)

~~~
31reasons
Drones should never be privatized, combining that much surveillance data with
your Facebook data, it can basically predict your next move. That would be too
much power in the hands of big corporations or malicious hackers.

~~~
scarmig
Luckily we'll keep drone use safe and restricted to governments, immune to the
ill intents of big corporations and malicious hackers.

~~~
patrickk
Wall Street already uses satellite data to determine sales for WalMart by
seeing how full the car parks are:

[http://www.cnbc.com/id/38722872/New_Big_Brother_MarketMoving...](http://www.cnbc.com/id/38722872/New_Big_Brother_MarketMoving_Satellite_Images)

The next logical step is for a private drone company with the ability to
collect, and analyse this data in near real time and sell it to Wall Street.
Maybe even sell the data to WalMart so they can monitor staffing levels, and
have the right amount of staff on the tills at all times for maximum
throughput.

You could also monitor shipping at ports, rail yard delivery volume, trucks at
warehouses and so on.

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dobbsbob
I couldn't sleep at night knowing I used my engineering degree to enable
global spying and summary executions of 'militant safehouses' full of kids, or
enabling western friendly dictatorships like Yemen and Bahrain by helping them
crush dissidents.

It's like when I hear about Physicists who no doubt got into the field to
explore the universe and everything in it then ended up making audio weapons
for the military for the sole reason of dispersing protests.

~~~
mseebach
It's great that you wouldn't. But it's really very arrogant to assume that
there exists no reasonable moral system that would allow an engineer to
participate in drone development or audio weapons.

~~~
hexonexxon
That reasonable moral system is the colour green and comes with dead
presidents on it

------
pavel_lishin
> _can spot a terrorist from 20k feet_

What's the altitude for detecting unarmed non-combatants?

~~~
ceejayoz
One of the definitions of "armed combatant" is "person killed in a drone
strike", so don't worry.

~~~
justsee
According to this article[0] it means 'all military-age males in a strike
zone', unless there is evidence posthumously that indicates a combatant is
innocent.

So the definition is narrower.

[0] <http://www.salon.com/2012/05/29/militants_media_propaganda/>

~~~
cma
Seems to be wider than you are claiming: "unless there is explicit
intelligence posthumously proving them innocent" is the quote. What burden of
proof are they using?

~~~
pavel_lishin
When the rocket hit 'em, they exploded, therefore they must have had
explosives on them, therefore they're a combatant.

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hemancuso
So it can resolve 6 inches at 20k feet. About 1 pixel of resolution for the
"terrorist's" face. At least they have a roughly 4x12 pixel image to make a
sound determination as to which person to target.

~~~
sliverstorm
What does the face have to do with it? Do terrorists have different faces?

I imagine context is important. Camping in a tree with something that looks
like a RPG, overlooking a supply route? Certainly suspect, no matter what your
face looks like.

All that said, the article has very little to say about terrorists. At least
as far as the article itself goes, it looks like the terrorist bit in the
headline was just an attention grabber.

~~~
hemancuso
I'm sure you're aware how regularly drones are used for targeted
assassination. Identification and tracking seems important.

~~~
Retric
Don't assume what's actually happening is all that close to what's being
described in an article like this. The goal is mostly just passive
surveillance, a crappy video of something interesting is far better than a
really high resolution video of an empty street.

PS: Don't forget your not limited to having one drone at a time.

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WestCoastJustin
This must be a really valuable information asset. Think about when a IED goes
off, they can reply the events leading up to this attack, trace the
vehicles/people involved back to houses/buildings. What about when a murder or
bank robbery happens. You can just watch when/where/who is doing what! This is
some jack bauer stuff!

~~~
Permit
My thoughts exactly. It would be almost trivial to find out where someone has
driven their car after committing a crime. I'm curious to see what might
happen if they deploy these in US cities.

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WestCoastJustin
This is a clip from PBS's "Rise of the Drones" [1]

[1] [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/military/rise-of-the-
drones.htm...](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/military/rise-of-the-drones.html)

~~~
keenerd
A little more context from that episode - this 1.8 GP camera thing was in part
because operators would get tunnel vision when running the mega-zoom camera on
the Predator drone for too long. They'd be tracking a van and miss the larger
context that the van is full of school children. Nova painted this camera as a
way to never lose the bigger picture. Of course now you've got a massive
bandwidth problem.

No mention was made of the obvious solution: add a second low-zoom camera. A
basic usability feature would be to click on a spot in the low-zoom area and
have the high-zoom camera immediately track over to that spot, making it very
easy to flip between several locations with the high-zoom lens.

edit: Other bit of bad design mentioned in that show. Apparently if you bank
too sharply the satellite connection will break. I do not understand how this
is possible. Gimbel the antenna and slave the servo to the artificial horizon
gyroscope. This was a solved problem decades ago.

------
antr
I find the technology and engineering behind this extremely interesting, but
on the other hand the potential end use of this very scary (if used
inappropriately by the wrong people).

The fact that today we can already buy a UAV for under $1,000 and a 4k camera
for $500 (<http://www.lehmannaviation.com/la/la100.php>) just gives you a
sense of how easy and fast this type of surveillance is evolving.

------
justinvh
I thought I would chime in on my own experience with related imagery. It's not
uncommon to use a drone similiar to ARGUS that is capable of NIIRS 5-7 (see
<http://www.fas.org/irp/imint/niirs.htm>) resolution for surveying. The guys
at the ground station will find some region of interest and then use another
bird/sensor--whether that is SAR, IR, multispectral, etc--with NIIRS 8-9
resolution and have it give a better look at the finer details of the area.

In terms of detecting objects: anybody with any sort of computer vision
background will probably be scoffing at drawing rectangles around objects that
are moving within a stable image. However, at a broader scope, change
detection and broad area detection are heavily research fields and are always
of interest to whatever 3-letter agency that deals with the imagery.

So, not only does ARGUS solve problems, it also provides data for creating new
problems. Cool little piece of hardware.

------
harrylove
Bottom-up lighting on the face. Ominous, Hans-Zimmer-ish, military-industrial
complex musical score. Dark lighting in the lab. Statements like: "It's
important for people to know the truth." Even the title of the program: Rise
of the Drones.

Result: Drones, engineers, and government projects are scary.

Not saying I agree or disagree with the sentiment, just that the bias is a bit
over the top.

------
pnathan
All I can think about here is some kind of big brother eye in the sky watching
every subject go about their daily lives as soon as they leave their house.

/just going to be over here with my tin-foil hat...

------
dcypang
They claimed they can stream 1.8 gigapixel video live or near real-time in the
PBS video. Does anyone have an idea of how they can get that much bandwidth
wirelessly ?

~~~
blhack
I doubt they're sending the entire stream. 1.8Gp isn't useful to look at
"zoomed all of the way out".

The video is [probably] cropped onboard the drone down to whatever resolution
is usable, and then that is streamed.

~~~
CraigRood
It's not absurd though for the military to have the capacity to bounce 600
gigabits/s around the globe. There are commercial sattelites with capacities
beyond 110 gigabits/s

------
ChrisNorstrom
I personally can't wait for them to use ARGUS and persistence stare in North
St. Louis, East St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, and all the other cities with
extreme violent crime problems. That's one of the biggest reasons for why so
many have moved out to the suburbs far far away from the cities. Look at your
cities crime-map data and notice how crime completely destroys entire
neighborhoods and surrounding areas. This new technology, if put to use to
combat crime could revitalize downtowns and cities for hundreds of millions of
people. Reversing suburban sprawl, "white-flight", and forest destruction.

People DO want to move inward, especially America's younger generations that
grew up isolated in the suburbs where everything important and all their
friends were miles apart. Young people in America are leading the urban
renewal philosophy, and it's sad to see their efforts, and their businesses
affected by crime.

I don't like the Privacy violation, but... With everything comes good and bad.
Look at cars, consumerism, religion, etc... Things that were set up with good
intentions, had some bad outcomes, and in the end were accepted when people
saw both the good and bad as general progress.

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fijal
About 6km, for non-americans.

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mxfh
«Panopticism is taken literally by at least one Air Force commander in
Kandahar. ‘He knows we’re there,’ Colonel Theodore Osowski told a reporter,
referring to the Taliban, ‘and when we’re not there, he thinks we might be
there’: Brian Mockenhaupt, ‘We’ve seen the future and it’s unmanned’, Esquire,
14 October 2009.»

in: Dis/Ordering the Orient: scopic regimes and modern war by Derek Gregory

[http://geographicalimaginations.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/...](http://geographicalimaginations.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/gregory-
disordering-the-orient-book-version.pdf) [pdf]

downloadable along other well researched resources on the topic here:
<http://geographicalimaginations.com/downloads/>

------
nextparadigms
Can spot a "target" from 20k feet would be a more accurate headline. Also, if
it can be that accurate for this, why can't they turn rocket drones into
sniper drones by now? Or do they actually prefer the capability of killing the
target and everyone around him at once?

~~~
mseebach
> why can't they turn rocket drones into sniper drones

Because it's really really hard to hit someone with a ballistic projectile
from a distance of 20k feet in 100 mph winds (or however fast a drone flies).

~~~
nacker
That's what the frickin' lasers are for.

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greedo
While handy for use in civil areas, or low intensity conflicts, this will be
useless in what we consider a "traditional" high intensity war. The airspace
in such a war is non-permissive. Any loitering drones will be easily shot
down, or jammed so that they have to return to base. GPS will be jammed, and
any AD system worth its salt will be able to down these with ease. And if the
enemy has fighter aircraft, it'll be a turkey shoot.

------
burningion
Imagine the attack possibilities locally.

I'm running for office, and I have a database of the political registrations
of houses. So I can build up and track the red or blue houses, and see which
places people are going to vote.

I now have the data I need to perform a DOS attack on the most threatening
poll places based upon raw, real time data.

~~~
mpyne
Each and every single one of those blue/red houses are already farmed into a
single well-known polling precinct in every state I'm aware of.

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leeoniya
i feel much safer now, take more of my tax dollars!

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realrocker
They are not going to use this for finding toddlers or birds, are they?

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JulianMorrison
Next up, "Google maps live". Hi Mom, can you see me waving?

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rikacomet
The picture is dated Nov, 2009. Seems valid, for it to be de-classified now. I
wonder what is the latest gadget they have (drool)

~~~
neumann_alfred
"A boot stamping on a human face — forever."

~~~
nacker
Brilliant! I don't know whether to laugh or cry....

~~~
rikacomet
lol, I really can't get away from the HN police :P

------
cpeterso
How much does this cost? Are there restrictions on US civilians owning or
using similar technology?

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emeidi
What are "20K feet" in meters?

~~~
kronholm
6096 meters, or 6.096 kilometers.

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largesse
I couldn't stop thinking about armed drones during the recent gun-control
furor. I was wondering how it would change the debate if people were really
thinking about it - about the near inevitability that they will be used
domestically by government and non-governmental actors. The issue doesn't win
clean points on either side, but it does seem to make a lot of today's fears
about guns seem trivial.

~~~
rayiner
Without major advances in artificial intelligence technology, drones have a
key weakness: the wireless link. Miniaturization may win the drones arms race,
which makes drones accessible to non-governmental actors, but when it comes to
controlling the spectrum, bigger is better. So governmental actors are always
going to have an advantage because they can build the biggest antennas
attached to the biggest power sources.

~~~
ceejayoz
Not a problem if you know where the target's going to be.

Imagine a swarm of explosive-carrying drones hitting the President's podium at
inaguration from a dozen different directions. Known time, known position,
open-air approaches. Must be something that keeps the Secret Service up at
night.

~~~
jacquesm
Consider the possibility that you just levelled up in a couple of database
tables.

~~~
tptacek
You're not serious, right? If joke: funny. If serious: worrying.

~~~
jacquesm
Definitely a joke, if you're serious that's even more worrying ;)

Still, people have been lifted from their beds for tweets about such things.

[http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/obama-twitter-death-
thre...](http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/obama-twitter-death-
threats-486712)

Granted that was slightly more specific threat, but this being hacker news
that ggp already has a strike against ;)

