Slashdot Mirror
Surveillance Robot That is Programmed To Hide
An anonymous reader writes "The folks over at Lockheed Martin have just released information about their new covert robot that can sneak up on buildings, detect and evade sentries, and send reconnaissance information back to the good guys. From the article: 'What makes the robot special is its ability to build a computer model of its surroundings, incorporating information on lines of sight. The robot is fitted with a laser scanner to allow it to covertly map its environment in 3D. It also has a set of acoustic sensors which it uses to distinguish nearby footsteps and their direction.'"
Clearly it would never be used on students, protestors, political opponents or scornful ex-lovers.
...and send reconnaissance information back to the good guys
So if I know for sure that I'm the bad guy, I definitely don't want to be using one of these.
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
...that can sneak up on buildings...
Those buildings are so dang hard to sneak up on, but they sure let out quit a yelp when you surprise them!
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." [Thomas Jefferson]
In Soviet Russia robots hide from YOU!
0. KILL ALL HUMANS
... welcome our new hidden overlords
I was paranoid before I RTFA now I'm bat shit insane! The tin foil just isn't gonna cut it now.
I wonder if I can modify my tiger repelling rock to repel tiny robot overlords?
Anyone got a firmware update? The last one I Installed was 2.45b which seems slightly buggy and didn't mention anything about robots.
I could prove it if I could just find the stupid thing...
The "good guys" are the ones with the robots. The "bad guys" are the ones without them.
It's kind of like, the "good guys" always win the wars, because their side is writing the history books. The "bad guys" are the ones who were bombed to oblivion, either with conventional bombs or nukes.
Consider World War II. As written by the allied forces. America was not involved in the war. We were innocently sitting by, letting them fight it out. Suddenly out of nowhere, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. No one expected any such thing. We were not involved. Just ignore the fleet of about 100 ships in port, 3 aircraft carriers nearby, about 400 aircraft on the ground, and all the troops.
If it were written by the Axis forces. America was staging for a strong attack against Axis forces. A pre-emptive strike managed to substantially reduce their strength, which reduced their ability to harm Axis soldiers and civilians.
And we all know which way it went. Dropping two nukes on Japan ended it. Consider both points of view.
For the allied forces, it was a strong blow to prove our military superiority, which ended the war.
For the axis forces, the massacre of about 200,000 civilians forced our surrender, to save countless lives from further attacks.
That is not to belittle the events of the war, or the tragic loss of life on both sides. It's only to illustrate how the perception of the outcome from such events is totally tainted by those who won. Of course the "good guys" won.
How about those WMD's now.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
"As written by the allied forces. America was not involved in the war. We were innocently sitting by, letting them fight it out. Suddenly out of nowhere, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. No one expected any such thing. We were not involved. Just ignore the fleet of about 100 ships in port, 3 aircraft carriers nearby, about 400 aircraft on the ground, and all the troops."
As I remember it in the US history book that I read, Japan was busy expanding to the south, China, and the Philippines in search of more land and resources. We were telling them that they needed to stop, or we'd be forced to intervene and blockade. They decided that a pre-emptive strike was in order. We didn't expect a conventional attack on Pearl, but were guarding against Japanese sabotage. They thought an attack would give them time they needed. It didn't.
"Dropping two nukes on Japan ended it. ... For the allied forces, it was a strong blow to prove our military superiority, which ended the war."
For the allied forces, it was a bluff made to prove our military superiority in an attempt to quickly end the war. If it didn't work, a long, drawn-out conventional invasion of the Japanese homeland would have killed hundreds of thousands of Allied and Japanese soldiers and Japanese civilians in an operation that would have made all of the earlier Pacific operations look like cakewalks.
And it just so happens that these versions of history tie pretty closely to those espoused by the Japanese, in particular, Fading Victory: The Diary of Admiral Matome Ugaki. There are also several revisionist attempts, including Day of Deceit.
Just goes to show that the presentation of history isn't always as one sided as one might believe.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.