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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?
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.