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Vision-based AI drones outfly world-class human pilots
- oldstrangers 4y agoAt this point nothing AI does (or could do) should come as a surprise. Humans will be completely outclassed in every scenario where AI is able to participate. The trick becomes how to benefit from AI as opposed to just entirely replacing human value.
- jvanderbot 4y agoI'd bet a lot of money they are following pre-optimized trajectories or policies, using onboard sensing to localize. I didn't get a good sense from the article whether the CAD model was only used at startup / online, or if they used the CAD and found routes or policies first (pre-trained) and followed / executed during. A great achievement, no doubt, but the days of hunter-killer drones flying willy nilly through arbitrary environments are not yet arrived.
- spoonjim 4y agoThe days of hunter-killer drones flying willy nilly through arbitrary environments is already here! What do you think Predator drones are doing in the Middle East?
- jvanderbot 4y agoArbitrary != high altitude loitering patterns. Arbitrary would include, like, your house, your yard, a coal mine, etc. That's a whole lotta autonomy that doesn't exist yet.
- melling 4y agoI imagine the military value will be too hard to overlook, and will get a lot of Defense dollars. A drone air force is much cheaper than a traditional one with pilots. Drone use is already evolving in warfare. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/column-drones-old-shells-key-070000440.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/column-drones-old-shells-key-... https://news.sky.com/story/ukraine-war-teenager-and-father-used-drone-to-spy-on-russian-forces-and-help-ukraines-army-12632472 https://news.sky.com/story/ukraine-war-teenager-and-father-u... Dozens of automated drones could make several quick surveillance runs on a regular basis, for example, using image recognition to report equipment location, etc
- Buttons840 4y ago> A drone air force is much cheaper than a traditional one with pilots. "Cheaper". This might be a reason it won't happen. At least not until wealthy militaries have learned some hard lessons.
- hodgesrm 4y agoHow are AI capabilities different from the introduction of guided missiles and fly-by-wire control in aeriel combat? Humans are still there but they take on different roles -- the end result is a much more formidable machine using blended capabilities. Framing the competition as AI vs. humans as in the UZH competition therefore seems to miss the point. Humans already can't fly high performance aircraft without machine help.
- tintor 4y agoNot always more formidable machine. Aircraft without human inside can be smaller, more expendable, can perform longer missions and tolerate higher g-forces.
- oldstrangers 4y agoIn the near term yes, humans and AI will have to work together. Eventually the only limiting factor in the AI's progress will be the human component. For stuff like these drones, where is the benefit of a human component? Picking the drone up off the ground? Being a spotter? Driving the drone to wherever you want it to fly? Lets take self driving cars for example. The benefit there is we no longer have to drive, but you also lose millions of jobs (taxis, trucking, etc). Capitalism isn't going to take a romantic approach to AI / human harmony. It will do what it always does, cut costs and turn profits at the absolute expense of everything that's not creating shareholder value. And to that extent, the military industrial complex will do exactly the same thing, just replace shareholder value with bloodshed.
- submeta 4y agoI wouldn’t want to work on these kind of projects as it is clear that eventually these technologies will be used for military purposes. They will lead to a kind of weapon that will get out of control. And will be used to kill many human beings. Let’s make no mistake: This is no innocent research in robotics but lays the foundation for weapons we don’t want to see or have.
- yboris 4y agoExcellent point. Here's an important PSA: https://www.stopkillerrobots.org/ https://www.stopkillerrobots.org/
- anigbrowl 4y agoThis seems like an exercise in futility. Robotic killers don't need to be sophisticated or expensive; writing international law is largely useless when the technology isn't limited to nation states.
- yboris 4y agoEven if you're right, just because we might not have the ability to curb all harms doesn't mean we shouldn't try to prevent the most egregious harms. There are benefits, for example, to making the use of mines and chemical attacks in war illegal.
- landryraccoon 4y agoDo you think it’s a risk that more authoritarian and belligerent states develop them first? War has been a constant force in human history up to and including the present day. I would greatly prefer that if such weapons exist that my society has access to them if others are sure to follow. For that reason I think it’s ethical to work on weapons technology. You could be a principled pacifist, but I think that’s self defeating. Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons, that did not bring them peace. Arguably if they had nukes, they would not be at war.
- 4y ago
- rg111 4y agoWhile many think that they should not work on such projects, my take is the opposite. If we don't work on these projects, then we will not have autonomous killing machines, and our rivals will. Turkey already have autonomous predator drones [0], and they have been used in the battlefield. If countries like the US, UK, France, Germany, India, Japan, Israel etc. do not have these, and China, Iran, and Russia do (they surely do or soon will), we are at massive disadvantage. We will have to deploy humans on the field when they won't have to. That is a gap too wide to exist. It is more fundamental than gunpowder. Like Archimedes created massive war machines, and mathematicians and physicists worked on artillery, weapons, and Manhattan project, AI scientists of today should help develop autonomous killing machines. Freedom isn't free. [0]: https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/07/05/killer-flying-robots-drones-autonomous-ai-artificial-intelligence-facial-recognition-targets-turkey-libya/#:~:text=The%20new%20Turkish%2Dmade%20Kargu,remote%20control%20by%20human%20operators https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/07/05/killer-flying-robots-dr....
- kache_ 4y ago
- rg111 4y agoOne should keep worrying about the people that have their hands on these weapons. It's the humans that people should keep worrying about seriously. AI is far, far, far away from having a will.
- kache_ 4y agoI'd rather have the humans that live in my backyard with the weapons, than people with a less vested interest in my safety.
- sokoloff 4y agoI don’t fully trust America; nevertheless having America build these systems is the right thing for Americans as I trust other countries less to have Americans’ best interests in mind.
- mosfets 4y agoVery impressive racing performance indeed! Though, the "vision based" wording in the title is a little misleading. Human pilots can use vision to develop an understanding of the whole environment, while the drone in this project still need to consume a CAD model of of the track. The vision is probably used to replace the motion capture system.
- quantumduck 4y agoYeah, vision is indeed used only to localize, not really to recognize the track. Low-key this is what I don't like Waymo/Cruise approach to autonomous driving - they use HD maps to localize themselves and I see that as finding an easy way out instead of tackling the harder problem.
- danuker 4y agoA humorously-named method I like is LSD-SLAM: Large-Scale Direct Simultaneous Localization and Mapping. It is fast, and it produces the richest point clouds I've seen, from even monocular video. The "Direct" comes from directly using pixels, not features such as SIFT/SURF. I suppose it could be used in environments with not too many reflective or transparent objects.
- black_puppydog 4y agoWow literally the only thing people seem to be putting up as an argument for working on this is "someone else will do it otherwise." I mean, yes this tech like most others is dual use. But let's for the sake of argument assume that we know this tech will mostly be used for military purposes. Yes, others might still develop this. But in the meantime "we" (whoever this is, reminder: HN users aren't just from the US) get to miss out on other things we could have invested millions/billions into. That infrastructure project? Gone. That research into new/better energy storage? Gone. That quirky project about preserving natural habitats in the third world? Gone. By the way, that one might have actually contributed something to a lasting peace in the region. But hey it doesn't matter because we'll win any armed conflict with our drones. That might sound bitter and/or idealistic, but ultimately if we accept that the funding of whole branches of research depends on how much benefit it provides to the military, then ultimately we can say all day long how we value nature and human rights and all these things, but we're really just dressing up a really fancy warrior armor with some Greenpeace badges.
- planetsprite 4y agothis however saves lives in the long term. MAD becomes predictable when you have AI v2 vs AI v4. The countries resolve peacefully before the battle even starts and exchange resources. The computers can ascertain losses before reality proves it.
- tsimionescu 4y agoThat is dangerously bad thinking. MAD is a pipe dream, and the world is still much closer to annihilation today than it was before nuclear weapons were invented. There have been far too many close calls to count. Secondly, no country will back down on the calculations of some unproven AI. And those calculations could only be proven in blood.
- quantumduck 4y agoA couple of points: 1. We doesn't have to be another country/military. It could just be another research lab in US, China, or anywhere else in the world. Some people just like pushing tech to the limits, they seek the next hardest problem. The hardest problem post robust drone controls/motion planning era (e.g. drones like DJI) is to make them pure vision based. 2. Millions/Billions? Lol what are you even talking about. It takes about 100k to fund a graduate student for one year. I wouldn't be surprised if this entire research work was less than 1 million, maybe even 500k.
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- bickett 4y agoI wonder how this will change in the future.
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- gcanyon 4y ago“…and it absolutely Will. Not. Stop. until you are…” a shot rings out, and Sarah Connor drops to the ground with a bullet hole dead center in her forehead as a terminator drone whizzes by. Yes, I know xkcd did it years back. I suggested this concept to an Air Force general at a 2002/3 planning meeting for the DARPA Grand Challenge. He looked at me cross-eyed and said “We don’t deploy systems like that.”
- jonathankoren 4y agoIronically, I think flight is much easier than driving. Simply because there's less things to hit, and it's all controlled (or at empty) airspace. It's just the low level navigation in residential neighborhoods that's hard. But a drone helicopter at a heliport or a field? Why not?