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DreamHammer Wants To Corner the Drone OS Market
nonprofiteer writes "The Pentagon is increasingly transforming the military into an unmanned force, taking soldiers out of harm's way and replacing them with drones and robots. In 2011, it spent $6 billion on unmanned systems. The problem is that the unmanned systems don't work well together thanks to contractors building proprietary control systems (to lock government into exclusive relationships and to make extra money). A company called DreamHammer plans to have a solution to this — a universal remote control that could integrate all robots and drones into one control system. It would save money and allow anyone to build apps for drones. 'DreamHammer CTO Chris Diebner compares it with a smartphone OS — on which drones and features for those drones can be run like apps. Of course, Ballista is doing something on a much larger scale. It means that it takes fewer people to fly more drones and that new features can be rolled out without the need to develop and build a new version of a Predator, for example.'"
The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea.
They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall
mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by
small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is
clear: To build and maintain those robots. Thank you.
-- Military school Commandant's graduation address, "The Secret War of
Lisa Simpson"
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Oh sure, but what about my wants. Who's to say that my wants aren't going to corner the drone OS market instead?
Let's solve the problem of government being locked into exclusive relationships with other vendors by - locking them into an exclusive relationship with us! But our dog and pony show is more elaborate than theirs.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Look, there is a reason that some Army guy has a different method of access to his unmanned recon tracked vehicle than an Air Force guy has to a Predator with Hellfire missiles, who has different methods of access than a weather drone pilot in the Navy. That separation creates very large walls that make it difficult to make mistakes.
Should the Pentagon have requirements for how a User Interface should look and feel? Hell yes they should. There should not ever be a simplified method of access across platforms. It's extremely dangerous.
On the other hand, I'm sure someone in the Pentagon has a friend or relative that needed cash so put out a bid on something like this despite the extremely obvious dangers.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I thought Cyberdyne Systems was the leader in this area.
Exactly. Making each unmanned system have its own interface and potentially communication protocols is another layer of security. This is the military, manpower cost is nil. Having an all powerful remote control system just screams single point of failure!
I haven't laughed that hard in a long time!
Do you realize the technical ineptitude in the military?
Our Network guys didn't even know what a routing loop was, or how I could take down the network in this one relatively unguarded room (that happened to house the routers).
We were lining up a satellite for our network access and it had to point x degrees; my lieutenant (college grad, because all officers are required to have Bachelor's degree in {INSERT RANDOM FIELD HERE}) requested I ask the guy if this azimuth had to be shot from the base, and if so if it was along the side or from the center.
I was the only non-officer in my company that could keep a generator running; if it died, no one knew how to start it, despite the instructions being written fairly clearly.
A sergeant fulled said generator with oil until it was full (full being to the top of the fill-tube). Then we had a geyser of oil coming out of the exhaust. A Marine was moving our front end loader and rounded a left hand corner that had a bank sloping down to the right...with the bucket up. Of course it tipped over.
These are but a few examples I've seen. The Army's SOP (standard operating procedure) for the Raven B UAV system is to stall it at 100-150 feet (I think) and let it fall to the ground to land. We were taught that $1000 in damages for 5 flights was acceptable/expected. The Marine's SOP was to do the same but at 50-75 feet to minimize damage.
I was a Marine. I'm proud of my service, but I'm not proud of the Marine Corps. It's full of a bunch of coddled stupid pussies. But the military should NOT be in charge of their own control systems for technical devices, not without a lot more technical education for those serving in the technical fields, which isn't going to happen with 4 years of service then treating everyone like shit so the majority leave.
Robots don't complain, require psychiatric counselling or go running to the press when you order them to kill whole wedding parties children and all, funerals, villages, or anything that moves really...