10 ms·
While I see the obvious dystopian version of this, I'd still like to see this tech in the hands of search and rescue teams. People get lost in the woods all th
by mabbo 5y ago
While I see the obvious dystopian version of this, I'd still like to see this tech in the hands of search and rescue teams.
People get lost in the woods all the time. Image a swarm of 100 of these drones, 200, 500, all flying at 40km/h in a coordinated sweep, searching with multi-spectrum cameras and image recognition.
- raxxorrax 5y agoProblem is still that they might not fly for more than 20 minutes, especially if you add a lot of sensory and processing power. I have an older gen drone and they are amazing dust cleaners when you launch them in your appartment. Only slightly irratates they eyes. But honestly I think power is still the technical barrier and the reason we don't yet have drones for package delivery. They won't fail because of sensory or software.
- trompetenaccoun 5y agoAll of this tech can also be used for good. They're introducing that new Wifi standard because they claim it can help monitor elderly people's heart rates. Surveillance cameras are there against street crime and they scan our private data in the cloud to prevent child pornography. Or take a look at this pilot project in China: https://old.reddit.com/r/ABoringDystopia/comments/q32799/because_ofcourse https://old.reddit.com/r/ABoringDystopia/comments/q32799/bec... Somehow the idea of autonomous winged cameras flying around all over the place does not make me feel safe.
- neither_color 5y agoIt's interesting how they sell this over there vs in the west. In the west you get very ominous, 1984 panopticon connotations whenever cameras are introduced. You never see this back and forth dialogue between your friendly overlords and the people being watched.
- EGreg 5y agoNo need for autonomous winged cameras, even A network of tiny cameras paired with wifi, can identify everyone all the time. You also carry your phone on you and now with Apple’s latest improvements it won’t really be “off” when you turn it off. They can hear through windows, lip read, and anything else. All that’s missing is a database that will cross compile all this information to reconstruct everywhere youwere and everything you’ve been doing, and your health characteristics at every moment. From there it’s pretty trivial AI to make sure to do precrime and nip “undesirable” gatherings or movements in the bud before they have a chance to take root. Ironically, the one place you MAY have privacy would be end to end encryptednetworks online.
- njarboe 5y ago"All that’s missing is a database..." Did you forget about this[1]? [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center
- seanw444 5y agoEvery time I drive past this place, I get an uneasy feeling. An organization I thoroughly detest, setting up shop with one of the largest data centers, right in my home region.
- Dylan16807 5y agoWhat wifi standard is that? I see a couple papers about how you could use wifi as radar to measure that among other things, but not much else.
- trompetenaccoun 5y ago802.11bf https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/31/wifi_devices_monitoring/ https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/31/wifi_devices_monitori... The more you look into it the more messed up it gets. Complete with a Huawei guy chairing the group developing it.
- rasz 5y agoI can imagine cleanup effort required trying to recover 10-20% of those drones after crashes/battery depletion, resulting in littering forest with garbage.
- imtringued 5y agoIf a drone is damaged while surveilling you and you don't turn it in, they will deduct points from your social credit.
- xwdv 5y agoMake them biodegradable.
- nirui 5y agoMaybe a controversial opinion, but I think it's a rather reasonable trade-off compare to say left someone dying in the woods.
- dralley 5y agoUnless it ignites a forest fire
- poopsmithe 5y agoput the fire out with more drones problem solved and nobody dies
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- sandworm101 5y ago>> someone dying in the woods. Lots of people do die in the woods. It's a daily thing. What is much rarer is to know that someone is dying in the woods. The scenarios whereby these drones are lifesavers are only those where a search has been launch and the lost person is still alive but in peril of death. And even with 100+ drones you still need to know the area of the person. The woods can be very big. The more efficient method, by far, is to have a device on the person from the start. Better coordination between search and cellular providers would do much in reducing search areas, at least when looking for people carrying cellphones.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago> Image a swarm of 100 of these drones, 200, 500, all flying at 40km/h in a coordinated sweep, searching with multi-spectrum cameras and image recognition. Now imagine those machines chasing down a thought criminal desperately trying to hide in the woods in order to avoid execution.
- tshaddox 5y agoI’m imagining them in a snowy forest chasing a boy carrying a baby, while the boy uses memories of coldness to hide them from the heat-sensitive cameras on the drones.
- SketchySeaBeast 5y agoI can say I absolutely didn't understand the importance or impact of some books they made me read in elementary school until years later.
- bostik 5y agoWe don't need to imagine, someone already did. Just search for "Slaughterbots".
- matheusmoreira 5y agoHoly shit that's horrifying. You can depopulate a whole country with that and then just move into it.
- imtringued 5y agoAccording to my napkin math it would cost 1.5 trillion USD to kill every American with drones and I am already assuming very cheap and capable ones, that you deploy them near the target and that the target is incapable of defending itself. The cost of deployment itself isn't even included. Nuclear weapons are very cheap in comparison.
- 5y ago
- raxxorrax 5y agoNext gen drones of that size can reach 60km/h and I don't think trees can significantly slow them down. So the end will at least come fast.
- nspattak 5y agoThe same is true for any human achievement: humans have used fire to burn other people as well as stay warm and metallurgy, knifes as tools or for war etc. autonomous drones can clearly be very useful.
- skinkestek 5y agoPolice, military and SAR have this already in helicopters. With good equipment you can scan large areas using only one helicopter.
- tastyfreeze 5y agoSAR is a statistical numbers game. Each search method provides some degree of certainty of coverage. Aircraft can't see through trees and thermographic cameras have a tough time seeing hypothermic or dead people. Ground search is still necessary even after a helicopter or fixed wing aircraft have gone over a search zone. A swarm of drones would allow a rapid search of an area with similar coverage statistics as a manned ground search. But a drone going 40 km/h could miss subtle clues like footprints or freshly broken branches.
- skinkestek 5y agoMostly true. The trick is to get out soon enough to find people alive. That said, if hypothermia has gotten so far that one is hard to spot on thermal camera I am afraid there isn't much hope left anyway.
- causi 5y agoWhat I really want is a drone with a robust recovery system. I want it to be able to hit tree limbs, fall to the ground, but then right itself and take off again.
- lm28469 5y agoThe amount of energy, tech and brain power we're spending on ever lower impact / less rewarding topics is scary. It's equally dystopian to me to be honest