Slashdot Mirror
What's It Like To Pilot a Drone? a Bit Like Call of Duty
Velcroman1 writes "Teenagers raised on Call of Duty and Halo might relish flying a massive Predator drone — a surprisingly similar activity. Pilots of unmanned military aircraft use a joystick to swoop down into the battlefield, spot enemy troop movements, and snap photos of terror suspects, explained John Hamby, a former military commander who led surveillance missions during the Iraq War. 'You're always maneuvering the airplane to get a closer look,' Hamby said. 'You're constantly searching for the bad guys and targets of interest. When you do find something that is actionable, you're a hero.' Yet a new study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found real-life drone operators can become easily bored. Only one participant paid attention during an entire test session, while even top performers spent a third of the time checking a cellphone or catching up on the latest novel. The solution: making the actual drone mission even more like a video game."
Solution to issues of boredom? Allow mouse+keyboard!
There is no guilt. The "enemy" is no longer people, but pixels rendered in false colour. No need to justify or otherwise rationalize murder. Neat. Welcome to the Ender's game.
I think that's the whole point. It should not be fun. That's why we didn't name them something flashier.
Gently reply
It needs to be more like a video game! After all, in video games, you get penalized when you shoot the random civilian instead of the guy with the gun.
Pretty sure I haven't used a joystick in Call of Duty or any other computer game in the last decade.
Who would ever conceive that controls based on those of a plane would be like those of a plane...
I mean heck, it's only a game, eh?
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
Tesla wanted robots fighting robots by wireless remote, so humans wouldn't have to participate in war.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
When the cost of war does not include lives on your side, there's zero motivation to end the war with peaceful, equitable treaty. And when there's no cost to you, there's little incentive to avoid going to war to begin with.
No wonder we're trapped in endless wars. The government just prints money so there's no limiting factor there and as long as our guys don't die, the public doesn't care.
Fantastic world we live in.
We need to get a Republican elected to president so we can start caring again.
Work Safe Porn
What kind of surname is Cummigs, anyway?
What's it like to be bombed by a drone and its faceless pilot? Even more important, do you think they (the faceless pilots) care?
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
No wonder pilots get bored during 24 hour long missions. But these aren't real planes, you are not limited to 2 pilots per drone. Assign a team of 10 to each and make them work in shifts. I'm pretty sure that will help more than giving achievments for watching rocks.
Just crank the AI up to max setting.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
If I recall correctly, this concept is addressed in the 1992 movie "Toys" [1] as seen in
http://reelchange.net/2012/04/27/was-the-worst-robin-williams-movie-just-ahead-of-its-time/
[1] and yes, I know it's a bad movie, but the idea of maneuvering real drones as videogames doesn't seem so out-of-time today.
If Americans, Canadians, or any other citizens of Western Countries had to live with the sound of drones overhead 24/7 they'd think again. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBRET2BCZUE
Seems to me like we need to crowd source this. Everyone can signup and watch the feed for targets. If something is marked by XX amount of users its flagged for review.
Know what bothers me the most, is that there are democratic countries with "kill lists" , they even go public with it, and is fine, completely fine no one seems to bother !!
Getting soldiers to shoot at their fellow human beings isn't always easy. By distancing the soldier from the target he isn't really killing anyone, he's almost playing a game. It isn't real. It's easy to rationalize.
For the pilot of the drone, it's just a matter of pushing a red button on a dreary Monday morning. What we don't see is the brother, mother, husband, or son whose flesh was blown to bits by the drone. Bombing someone with a high tech manned aircraft is one thing, but the moment we abstract ourselves further and further from the hell that is war, we become the very monsters we're supposedly out to stop. I predict the drone strikes, the occupation in Iraq, and all other activities in the middle east we've been undertaking are only going to bite us back in another tragic incident like 9/11. Remember 9/11? We forgot 9/11 the day we let ourselves got lulled into two wars. We're breeding a new generation of terrorists who are growing up to fear and hate the drones, controlled by none other than the United States of America.
A common quote of combat pilots goes something like, "Combat flying is hours of boredom punctuated with a few seconds of complete terror." I've read something like this quote from several sources but most commonly from WWII pilots (and crew). Why should drone pilots expect it to be different?
At least the drone pilots get to go home even if the drone itself crashes, gets shot down, etc. I can imagine what a ball turret gunner from a B-17 or B-24 would say about the drone pilots being bored when they spent hours in a cramped, unpressurized, freezing cold turret scanning the airspace below the plane for approaching enemy interceptors; trying to stay alert and alive.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
I wonder how hard it would be to feed the input into an existing game engine? Gamers could identify potential targets and based on reputation / number of ids the target could be investigated further. You could use something like Amzon mechanical Turk to set challenges.
With the Army's Blimp providing more data, analysis will become increasingly more challenging.
get people like beavis and butthead to fly them but give them some training first.
http://vimeo.com/44875392
Just crank the AI up to max setting.
Oh, please don't.
You know there will just be a big stack of drones hopping up and down, all trying to get out the closed hanger door.
Pvt. Joker: How can you shoot innocent women and children like that?
Helicopter gunner: It's easy. You just don't lead them as much. You see, anyone that runs, is V.C. Anyone that stands still is well disciplined V.C. Ain't war hell?
Skip ------ See the latest from http://www.anArchyFortWorth.com
"And when we're not invading some sovereign nation, or setting it on fire from the air, which is more fun for our Nintendo pilots, then we're usually declaring war on something here at home."
RIP Evil Old Uncle George.
You can't - campaigns in this game have hardcoded difficulty settings. So if you're bored by the Afghanistan one, you have no choice but to switch to something else - say, China or Russia.
it is brown and different and diametrically opposed to your own interests. shoot to kill amirite?
How many points would you lose if you accidentally hit a wedding or a children's playground?
Really? Out of thousands of video game genre's the article compares this to Call of Duty?
How bout... I dunno... any one of the hundreds of flight simulators?
Get real.
Surprisingly to whom? I do not find it surprising at all that the gaming industry feeds into the military/industrial complex.
Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
Not long after meeting Elyas Machera, he asked if he should throw the axe away, but Elyas told him only to do so once he found himself enjoying its use.
"Death, destruction, disease, horror. That's what war is all about, Anan. That's what makes it a thing to be avoided. You've made it neat and painless. So neat and painless, you've had no reason to stop it."
Just because the supervisory control of a drone is similar to a video game, doesn't mean it's all the same.
When things go bad (and they do a lot) on a real drone, like lost of comm, part failure, missed target, the weather, it isn't about reaction time, which most gamers would assume, but strategic thinking and correct reaction/response. And when you lose a drone, it's not a $60 game, but millions of people's time and work, not to mention likely people's lives. Laws of physics will never be replicated in a game engine, nor a super computer simulation (i.e. why it's call a simulation!). Just ask the meteorologists.
Just because the user interface is similar doesn't mean the context is the same. But like most gamers and game designers, it's always about the game and applying gaming [theory[ to everything. Could be why we're all bored psychologically.
Anyone else think of Ender's Game reading this?
See, there's this whole bunch of countries that mean no harm to other countries or other ideologic groups. And I'm not talking about small countries with zero-influence on the world stage. Mine is the 5th largest country by population and area, the largest and most influential democracy in South America and yet I have never seen a thing like a "official, government-approved kill list". At least not since we regained democracy 28 years ago.
It's funny how the "best" democracy in the world, two centuries old and counting has such a thing. I wonder if democracies always (d)evolve to that in the long-run.
maybe the problem of boredom is that too experienced pilots are tasked for drone piloting. maybe drone pilots should be recruited separately, and be given an adapted training. a real pilot is trained all day long to try to save his own life, while a drone pilot can step away and hand over to someone else while going for lunch. -alex-
-alex-