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Title: Autonomous Quadrotors Fly Amazing Formations
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URL Source: http://www.wired.com/autopia/2012/0 ... rotors-fly-amazing-formations/
Published: Feb 5, 2012
Author: Jason Paur
Post Date: 2012-02-05 00:39:22 by A K A Stone
Keywords: None
Views: 2877
Comments: 5
Roboticists at the University of Pennsylvania’s GRASP are able to get as many as 20 of their autonomous microcopters to fly in formation and perform complex maneuvers flawlessly. In an impressive new video, the GRASP — General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception — team makes their swarm of flying microbots flip, change direction, navigate through obstacles and even fly figure-eights with jaw-dropping agility and precision. GRASP has since 2010 made remarkable advancements in the capabilities of their tiny quadrotors, developed by Kmel Robotics, and documented them with a series of videos showing bots flying hoops and building a tower-like structure. The lab is developing the ability to fly autonomously in formation, communicating with each other to maintain position. Last year the team demonstrated a basic formation flight with a lost-communication demonstration where one of the aircraft drops out on its own. There is still plenty of human input as the tiny UAVs are programmed to fly various tasks. No Skynet yet. Such machines could be used for surveillance or search-and-rescue missions. They’re also just plain cool to watch. As we wait for the next trick, we hope becoming self aware is indeed just science fiction.
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#1. To: A K A Stone (#0)
They are cute until you have one following you with a microphone and video doing surveillance on you. I am personally more interested in detection and neutralization protocols for the models that will eventually come based on this design. I'm here to tell you, they didn't spend the research funds on this just to make a cool toy. Remember, the first military aeroplanes the military used in WW I were sent up to do surveillance and the antagonists waved to each other at first. Then came the arming of the aircraft and dogfights. Then General Jimmy Doolittle became the first to show a myopic and unbelieving navy brass a demonstration of the power of the airplane to destroy ships. Now, aircraft carriers are the epically most powerful ship on the planet. never underestimate what these things can develop into, and how it can warp and bedevil your existence.
Imagine hundreds of thousands or millions of them flying over cities. With lethal doses of poison and syringes hooked to them. Descendants of these things could be what is described in parts of Revelation.
www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2012/02/faa_drones.html Congress Calls for Accelerated Use of Drones in U.S. February 3rd, 2012 by Steven Aftergood A House-Senate conference report this week called on the Administration to accelerate the use of civilian unmanned aerial systems (UAS), or “drones,” in U.S. airspace. The pending authorization bill for the Federal Aviation Administration directs the Secretary of Transporation to develop within nine months “a comprehensive plan to safely accelerate the integration of civil unmanned aircraft systems into the national airspace system.” “The plan… shall provide for the safe integration of civil unmanned aircraft systems into the national airspace system as soon as practicable, but not later than September 30, 2015.” The conference bill, which still awaits final passage, also calls for establishment of UAS test ranges in cooperation with NASA and the Department of Defense, expanded use of UAS in the Arctic region, development of guidance for the operation of public unmanned aircraft systems, and new safety research to assess the risk of “catastrophic failure of the unmanned aircraft that would endanger other aircraft in the national airspace system.” The Department of Defense is pursuing its own domestic UAS activities for training purposes and “domestic operations,” according to a 2007 DoD-FAA memorandum of agreement. (“Army Foresees Expanded Use of Drones in U.S. Airspace,” Secrecy News, January 19, 2012.) Update: In the recently enacted FY2012 National Defense Authorization Act (section 1097), Congress mandated that “the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration shall establish a program to integrate unmanned aircraft systems into the national airspace system at six test ranges.” This new test range program is supposed to be established within 180 days.
Not really into your religious connotations, actually. But there was a syringe equipped mechanical hound that took out an innocent bystander in Ray Bradbury's book Fahrenheit 451.
what verses were you thinking about?
#2. To: Ferret Mike, war (#1)
#3. To: Ferret Mike (#1)
#4. To: A K A Stone (#2)
#5. To: A K A Stone (#2)
Descendants of these things could be what is described in parts of Revelation.
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