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Tiny Surveillance Aircraft Fly in Tucson
An anonymous reader writes "Science Daily reports that thirteen teams from the United States, Korea and Germany will be in Tucson April 9-11 to compete for $6,000 in prize money during the 8th International Micro Air Vehicle (MAV) Competition. MAVs are tiny, radio-controlled airplanes that carry video cameras."
Come to think of it, it's pretty sad I thought of it that quickly...
Your kidding, right?
According to the article, the research is not trivial because research "already has resulted in two master's theses [...] and future graduate research probably will focus on propeller design and ultralight control mechanisms."
Do we really need control systems this light? They have set a "wind date" for this competition for fear of a gust of wind destroying the MAVs; how will we make something reliable out of this?
Work sucked, until it became unemployment, when it became slightly more tolerable. -Tet
MAV- micro air vehicle Its just the people who want to use them that dictates they have cameras, all the early ones were purely micro air vehicles, nothing more, just people proving they could make stuff that small that flew under remote control. Why doesnt it surprise me that someone not only found a questionable use for them, but managed to subvert the entire acronym?
do they care that the technology they're helping develop will be used to KILL people in future wars, perhaps even against their own country?
I think nothing sums up the problem with american society today.
Actually as a country the USA does more to save lives than it does to kill. Groundbreaking research in medical and safety innovations, in search and rescue, being at the head of the forefront when natural disasters strike around the world, more donations to foreign nations in need for food, medical supplies and fresh water, and better care worldwide in general due to US invention.
I think if you look at the number of deaths it pales into insignificance. Let these kids play with their planes, it's all in fun
RST
Can I buy one of them for an affordable price without having to re-solve all the problems mentioned in the article?
What video-goggles are recommended?
Cool. I've stopped 2 kids from running out into traffic (both my own) and perhaps helped save many others by being volunteer traffic warden at their school. I figure with the blood donations I've given I've also helped save the lives of perhaps 3 other people in total. And no doubt having gone to defensive driver training I've perhaps prevented the death of an entire family over my 35 year driving history.
That's almost 10 people I've saved. By your logic, how many am I allowed to kill now "all in fun" ?. May I start with you?
If your very expensive micro/nano surveilance device was defeated by chick-a-dees? (or any other small avian). Really what would keep songbirds from trying to eat these? or raptors from taking down the bigger ones by mistake?
Now if only it was a Micro Upskirt Video Vehicle contest, the Japanese team would win for sure!
how will we make something reliable out of this?
Research is done in small steps, or did you hear the anouncement of a Warp engine in the next decade? Right now we are at "mega ultra sonic speed" for under 60 seconds. Next time it will be 5 minutes...
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
i thought Rammstein ruled Germany with an iron fist?
And yet, it stops anti-trust proceedings against companies who kill. This is criminal. Murderers should be tried, whether they are individuals or companies. Politics shouldn't allow them get off scott-free.
Yes Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer are responsible for the loss of 7 innocent lives:
Microsoft Powerpoint fingered in space shuttle crash
Where's the how tos websitee ?
for MAVs? I closaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaajj
wher
I want to build one "radio-controlled ornithopter flies by flapping its wings at about 15 beats per second"
Fine. Will you approve then if the USA kills you in order to save other people? You will be glad then to acknowlege that your death would "pale into insignificance" compared to the good it came out of your sacrifice.
This kind of inmature reasoning is what keeps the society in a loop of war and hate.
Technology doesn't kill people. People kills people...
I think you're a bit late to start the moral debate over who's the greater evil: the developer of a potential weapon, or the users of the devices. This debate has been going on for some time.
:P)
I think it would be pretty damm difficult anyway, to kill someone directly with a "MAV" (although you could, with a bit of semantic jiggery-pokey define a lump of lead as a "micro flying vehicle"
There are far more destructive inventions up for the gold medal in this debate: nuclear weapons, the gun, TNT (old Alfred was clearly so upset when someone used *his* neat little invention for killing other people, he sponsored a prize for peace), etc etc.
We have had technology to snoop on each other from orbit for years now - our streets are lined with CCTV (well they are in the average UK city)so why get so fired up about a small aeroplane with a camera in it? Reconnaisance was after all, the first real military use for full size 'planes.
Do you really think "nothing" somes up the problem with American society Today? Surely there's always room for improvement!
When is the contest for Anti-MAV? Tiny rockets that shoot down MAVs.
Well, While I agree with your final conclusion, (the fun bit) I think perhaps its a good idea to take a look at some facts about where the US ranks worldwide in giving econonomic aid.
Its on position 20, with a very skinny $23.76 per person per year.
Number one is Luxemburg, with a whopping $352.30 per person.
All terribly off topic, but I had to...:)
The Bigger The Headache The Bigger the Pill
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/robotics/2 001/1/MicroWarfare/print.phtml
more on microjet at
http://defence-data.com/f2000/pagefa1006.htm
These little MAV video cameras can fly ANYWHERE!!!
3. Profit!
2. ???
1. On Soviet Slashdot, a Beowulf cluster of alien Natalie Portman overlords welcomes YOU!
Wait a minute, in Don Brown's Deception Point, they had classified MAV's flying around the Arctic Winds. Heck, one was even used to poke an eye out and then flew back to finish its surveillance job (once again in the whipping wind). Oh Damn, I guess that is why it is called fiction.
You're right, technology should never be brought to war. We should go back to carpet bombing instead of laser guided munitions. We should go back to sending scouts in instead of video cameras, so they can get shot. Hell, let's go back to hand-to-hand bloodbaths.
Wars are going to happen, period. Politicians are just as willing to kill 1000 as 10 to achieve their goals. It's naieve to think that they'll be more likely to go to war because we have a camera in an RC plane.
The most likely result of having spy planes like this would be LESS casualties. Imagine being able to fly a video fly into a building where there's a hostage crisis going on and getting real time video. Imagine flying into a mosque and having video telling you who's in there, where, etc. The place could easily be filled with civilians, and we'd avoid attacking them. Or, it could be filled with armed troups, and we'd have proof to the world that we're justified in attacking.
Almost all war-related technological innovation of the last 50 years has been targeted at reducing civilian casualties, collateral damage, and exposure of our own troops to fire.
As a geek, i love it. Its a great challenge, a new thing... push on.
:)
As a citizen of this world and then of America, one can only make one observation about our world...
There never were civil rights. Its a myth because those who followed, never really beleived it applied to anyone other than themselves. Freedom is a radical experience where those with the most capital get as they please while others get monitored through mini airplanes
So get to work guys! Stop being so moral and ethical. Get rich and you too can have your civil rights... and imunity from the law.
Frankly i'm far more impressed with that recent soccer autonomous robot. As a big fan of robotics and the robotic soccer games.... I was just impressed to see what a civilization in love with technology and progress where intrigue and curiousity for the good of man kind dominates, build such a unique thing.
Sony and Honda have also done similar things. Its amazing how Japan has created so many wonderful things and how its embraced by their culture compaired to ours. We seem so quick to build new missles, spy planes etc...
Lets get started on a nice friendly game of autonomous soccer. We have our competitors in this country but... its a shame such a great and wonderfull acomplishment goes so unnoticed by our civilization.
Perhaps we just dont appreciate science and technology for the sake of creation enough. Perhaps we diserve to destroy our own culture and economy.
Actually, the goal is to kill more efficiently. That ultimately means killing fewer people, with less destruction. How's that for morals?
Vision-Guided Flight for MAVs
Looks like these little blighters can be tricky to fly, they are using a computer to track the horizon to help keep them level.
Yeah, right. If I can take down clay pigeons with one of these, then I can take down a MAV.
Motorized moths with little cameras are spying on me! I see them wherever I go. I thing the government sent them!
How ya like dat?
The use of different departments using the same name for something that is different.
y stems/gro und/mav.htm
The MAV is a medium armored vehicle program
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/s
These are interesting. Flapping wings n such. Would it be possible to use insects in the design?
For instance could you take an exoskeleton from maybe a grasshoper, and add microparts so it's remote controlled?
You're right, much better to stick one's head in the sand and not advance technology. Because, of course, nobody else is going to do it if I don't, right?
I struggle with this. I am an aerospace engineer, and right now if I want to work in the field I love, I need to work for a defense contractor. This is not my ideal solution. I believe, however, that America (my country, which I do believe in) does far more good than harm with its military. I know lots of people disagree with me, and that's OK. I happen to think that this adventure into Iraq was particularly ill-advised. However, at the end of the day, helping America to design more precise weapons and surveillance systems will a) keep my country strong, and b) save peoples' lives both home and abroad.
That's my moral code. Yours might be different. Many warriors have died to defend our right to disagree. Many engineers have worked their entire lives to decrease the amount of death required to accomplish that goal. I think both are noble pursuits.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
You're right, technology should never be brought to war. We should go back to carpet bombing instead of laser guided munitions. We should go back to sending scouts in instead of video cameras, so they can get shot. Hell, let's go back to hand-to-hand bloodbaths.
That's really not such a bad idea - limit war to symbolic hand-to-hand combat between a small number of elite warriors. But I think we need to go even further back. Say, before agriculture, when there was no need for wars of annihilation at all. Imagine it - many thousands of little tribal groups, each playing "Erratic Retaliator" to work out where and how often they rub elbows with their neighbours... Actually, it was probably better than what we have now in many ways.
Now if we could just manage to combine it with low population and high technology, we'd be getting somewhere. Cheers!
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
In Frank Herbert's scifi novel Dune , miniaturized SMART flying weapons exist that can seek out and kill a specific person or persons. Here's a delivery system already; strap some bad stuff onto one of these contraptions and you've got lots of trouble.
I had hoped that this would take a few more years to arrive.
Thanks to miniaturization (and nanotechnology) politics will become as it was Venice during the Middle Ages, when powerful figures were usually eliminated by poisoning or other surreptitious methods.
Raymond Z. Gallun's story, "The Scarab," was published in Astounding in 1936 (and anthologized by Groff Conklin in Science Fiction Thinking Machines in 1954).
The story is set in the year 1987 and describes "a tiny thing, scarcely more than an inch and a half in length. The fancy of the craftsman who made it had given to the Scarab the form of the beetle of which it wa snamed. But its body had a metallic sheen, and its vitals were far more intricate than those of the finest watch."
It is capable of observing with its "quartz-lensed eyes" and sounds are "detectable to [its] sensitive, microphonic ears." It can fly at "terrific speed" to "the cold, unresistant texture of the stratosphere." It makes its way into meeting room where a dastardly plot is in progress. It is never made clear it relays information back to "the mind that controlled the Scarab," but when that mind "had seen and heard enough" it instructs the Scarab to land on the bad guy's neck and "a tiny part of a drop of liquid was injected into its victim's blood stream."
The good guys win.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
All technology is double-edged. To someone with a really destructive bent, there's enough information out there in scientific papers to do enough harm. We were in a nanotech class where the topic was molecular adressing mechanisms used by the human body - enough information to target an organ of a specific ethnic race of humans. And all that is in the journals. As for this MAV - as an engineering project there's nothing inherently wrong in it. IMHO there's nothing wrong in investigating and developing technology. As far as its applications go, all these social / human / personal tastes start playing into the picture. As technology progresses we will become more and more `enabled' to do certain things but we will also make our own lives more and more precarious. It's up to us to keep our morals in check given that we have access to all this technology. (Afterall, guns don't kill people - do they :))
Humans have such a good sense of humor!
Well actually it might not be such a bad idea to issue all these politicians with baseball-bats and a machete or two and let them go after each other. CNN and Faux could then give us the blow-by-blow job in glorious technicolor with hiatus as appropriate for the ads. The MAV's would be used to get those gory smashed-skull with flies close-ups that do such a good job of raising Ketchup sales.
//rhi
They'd better beware the high-powered lasers I test in my backyard, in my personal SETI program. I might have to sandbag the grounds with my local Quarterton Nudist meetings.
--
make install -not war
Grandparent poster referred to "the US", your statistics refer the the US Federal Government.
Contributions to charities by the US private sector are 2% of the US GDP, which far surpasses any other nation. Most of that goes to foreign aid.
Bill Gates and Ted Turner alone surpass most countries with the billions they've spent on health care for poor countries...and none of that money is counted in your very misleading stats.
Yeah yeah yeah. Sure. Ted Turner and Bill Gates will save you
The Bigger The Headache The Bigger the Pill
Look, I see a world of better ideas about what good these things can do. Stop looking at all of the negatives.
First of all, it would help explore the tops of large building areas if need be, or could be used to cover larger high areas for search and rescue. What if a person was trapped on a cliff on a deep woods rescue? You could definitely use one to spot a way down to get them. What about just to check power lines for damage? Or to look at endangered bird nests in an inobtrusive way?
There are a lot of times where a helicopter is expensive, not available, or cannot be flown. This is a great tool to work in between those parameters, where right now, we have nothing.
A lot of you start thinking about the worst part of a purpose... like delivering a tiny bomb or spying on people. That just isn't the way it always goes.
hello! I'm poor Japanese.
I am not learning "KARATE".
I like American people and American innovative technology.
but, I don't like the American government.
Bush is masahiro Nakai. The game by a monkey.(with a dog.)
(Present BGM is: Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark - Enola Gay.ogg
_
# CheapGbE!GbE!!TheKLF!KLF!!TheRMS!RMS!! And a meme sparks
>Now if we could just manage to combine it with low
>population and high technology, we'd be getting
>somewhere. Cheers!
That's easy, build Skynet.
Crap I live in Tucson well better stay inside those days ;)
Exactly, that's because your government couldn't give a shit. Bombs are more important than saving lives and eradicating subsistence.
Yeah but, can they automatically recharge by finding and eating sh*t?
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
Let's see who can make the biggest surveillance aircraft! I haven't seen that before. READY... SET... GO! Start building!
Play-by-play announcer:
"Putin winds up, and... OOOOOH! Chuck, I think it's safe to say that Queen Elizabeth ain't pretty no more!"
Things like that would never happen with truely small scale aircraft simply because the government would not allow that technology to be used in the public arena.
Just like GPS has its limits compared to actual military GPS.
I simply do not see such military being sold openly for anyone, including our enemies to buy.
Thats just not how our government operates. Military technology companies have restraints on who, what, and when they can sell their stuff to other countries.
We have plenty of rc helicopter scale vehicles that could be used for all of those purposes. Theres no need for micro sized aircraft for the examples you presented.
I do agree though. Something positive will come out of it eventually perhaps. But do we really need these things in the general public?
The government will ask themselves that eventually and decide for us.
Almost all war-related technological innovation of the last 50 years has been targeted at reducing civilian casualties, collateral damage, and exposure of our own troops to fire.
Well stated. Anti-war folks have a hard time understanding that better weapons can mean less war/killing. And better information can mean a LOT less killing. Many of the things that are unreasonable are outlawed by the Geneva convention (biowarfare, etc).
OK, I tried googling Skynet and didn't get any results that made sense in the context of your post. What did you mean?
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
I saw a great comic book story awhile ago where american teenagers (sometime in the future) were joining up with their concerned friends from all over the world to remotely fly these micro vehicles to some sort of international hotspot courtesy of the UN.
The teens were controlling the little flyers with thier home computers and were searching for some sort of evidence of WMDs or such.
Perhaps a thousand of these little flyers with video cameras could have helped avoid an Iraq invasion by showing the world that there really wasn't much going on?
Actually, it was probably better than what we have now in many ways.
/.) that you are over 25 years old, right? If yes, you would be considered an OLD man in those "good old times", pretty much ready to die any time now... And yeah, from 12 to 20 you were trying to make children every year, but you were lucky if two of them survived...
Well, it's 50/50 chance (here on
Paul B.
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I struggle with this. I am an aerospace engineer, and right now if I want to work in the field I love, I need to work for a defense contractor.
;-) Yeah, I can hear your sentiment, really...
On the corner of Marine and Aviation, by any chance?
Paul B.
"I am an aerospace engineer, and right now if I want to work in the field I love, I need to work for a defense contractor"
Sorry, but if you were really good, you could work for Burt Rutan, or for a Formula 1 team.
I think you're not good, but only mediocre, so you whore yourself out to people who make devices which are used to kill.
Happy next life, because you'll probably come back as a cockroach.
Hope springs eternal. I'm not employed yet, but I'm hoping for a birthday present. : )
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Old once over 25? Not among hunter-gatherers, I don't think. Perhaps among agriculturalists. As to being lucky if two children survived, I think it's better to have only replacement levels than a steadily increasing population.
None of which really matters to the sense of my post, which was that pre-agricultural people (and people from non-agri. cultures up to current times) were better off IN MANY WAYS than we are. I'm not suggesting that they were better off overall, though it makes one wonder to think that most hunter-gatherers demonstrated a preference for death over living the way we do.
Humans have been around for (depending on your definition of human) something like a million years. We have these things called cultures that are basically cognitive toolkits for living. The ones most people on earth use now are very good at some things (technological progress, growing more people, wars of annihilation or absolute conquest, creating material wealth and concentrating it in the hands of the rich). They're not so good at other things (promoting happiness and mental health, protecting and sustaining the environment, limiting our own population, promoting cooperation between all humans).
It just seems to me that it's worth looking at other cultures to see what we might learn about doing things we don't currently do so well. Cheers!
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.