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Army Tests Autonomous Black Hawk Helicopter
An anonymous reader writes "A specially equipped Black Hawk was recently used to demonstrate the helicopter's ability to operate on its own. In the first such test of its type, the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Research's Development and Engineering Center, based at Redstone Arsenal, flew the Black Hawk over Diablo Mountain Range in San Jose, Calif. Pilots were aboard the aircraft for the tests, but all flight maneuvers were conducted autonomously: obstacle field navigation, safe landing area determination, terrain sensing, statistical processing, risk assessment, threat avoidance, trajectory generation and autonomous flight control were performed in real-time. 'This was the first time terrain-aware autonomy has been achieved on a Black Hawk,' said Lt. Col. Carl Ott, chief of the Flight Projects Office at AMRDEC's Aeroflightdynamics Directorate and one of the test's pilots."
Skynet. That is all.
Great.
CAPTCHA: bloodied
That means that when the US government sends them out on domestic civilian pacification/suppression/reconnaissance missions, the people can shoot them down without feeling bad about killing people. It's too bad the government does not share such reluctance.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
I saw these at a kiosk at the Mall the other day.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
My first thought is "So what?" Granted, pretty darn good for a first test. But these were very ideal looking conditions. Try it in real world conditions and then get back to me. Cloudy days, rain, fog, high winds, snow and ice, sandstorms...I'd bet any of those would throw this thing for a big loop.
Good thing they didn't hook it up to Battlefield 3. It would have crashed 3 second into the flight.
First jigabachis... next.. tachikomas? Motoko, be ready.
including the use of weapons? (Next logical step)
if it weren't about to kill us.
I am sure there will be many posts about 'big brother' and the evils of the government, but I have to say....cool.
I have always been interested in robotics. This is just amazing to me. We have moved so fast (in regards to computing), I can only imagine what will be common place in the next decade.
p.s. It would be awesome if they posted the algorithms they used for this. I won't hold my breath.
This is sort of scary to me. It is as though we're living in the age of SkyNet yet most of us don't know it.
We have Robot Down!"
That sounds a lot less scary, doesn't it?
Where's my $100 plane ticket to Australia?! (Note: far from Kangaroos at this point.)
Ok, I'm seriously missing something. Is that my paranoid gene? So all tech now will be bad, because all tech can be used to kill people? Seriously?
Come on, idea of Internet was conceptually concieved by military for communication infrastructure to survive localized nuclear attack! So it must be bad too!
I'm the only one who sees beneficts of this, or drones... Or Slashdot has long time ago lost it's common, humor and cool head senses and I'm preaching to wall here?
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Good for them. Maybe they can use this to finally get the Osprey to fly as well.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
All looks military grade but this bathtub cork on a cheesy chain attached to the scanning thingy (LIDAR?)...huh?
4wdloop
You can almost feel the boner that the Slashdot editors have for this crap, the way they're constantly shoving it at the readership. Frighteningly, a considerable portion of the readership likely has the same boner. That's what decades of living in a nation that glorifies war does.
Notice the display in the corner of the video - just like a video game.
Turning the other cheek only works if the other party is a 60 lb unarmed girl. I think it is very good that you are living in such a nice padded coccoon that you can actually believe that pacifism is a viable strategy. It shows that the police and military are successful in keeping you a safe and insulated mommy's little baby with no real word experience, but one day, when you venture out of the basement, please don't go anywhere with grafiti on a wall, stick to the major shopping mall food courts and you should not come to any harm.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Another step towards video-game warfare. This works better when the enemy, real or imagined, can't attack your country or your ships or your bases. Next step: Soldiers will be randomly selected for suicide according to simulated warfare; no need to make weapons of war.
This is well and good, but what happens when a Marine types 'FLY HARD' into the console and hits return?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7783335/ns/us_news/t/reckless-pilots-problem-us-military/
Turning the other cheek
Hey, look everyone, a Christian who happens to be a complete fuckheaded warmonger! Who would have thought of such thing?
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Notice the display in the corner of the video - just like a video game.
Just FYI, the video games emulated the HUD's not the other way around. But more to the point, so fucking what?
Guess who has been going around slapping other people's cheeks and giving pretty bad excuses for doing so.
Pacifism isn't a viable strategy for other countries when the USA keeps going around "projecting power".
You bunch look more and more like the bad guys every day. Except with way more firepower.
But if they don't have pilots who are they going to make contenders in an execution that's fronted as a TV game show?
There must be a thousand different ways to use this technology in order to improve our lives rather than in a war machine.
The control algorithms, IMU processing, hell even very good terrain data are all openly available. Some time in a engineering library searching papers will even turn up reams of applications to helicopters specifically.
Even very good image systems are available.
What's changed is the processors to make use of all those are both rediculously cheap and light.
Human pilots.. your time is coming.
..don't panic
The article summary is slightly misleading. AMRDEC is headquatered out of Redstone in Alabama, but the US Army Aeroflightdynamics Directorate (a division of AMRDEC) developed the RASCAL helicopter and is located at Moffett Field, alongside NASA Ames research center. RASCAL has been in development for many years, flying out of Moffett near Montain View, CA, and this flight is just the latest in a long series of incremental advances.
The hot new thing in the rotorcraft industry right now is "optionally piloted" vehicles--the idea being that you'd like to use helicopter as they're used today, with pilots flying troop transport and assault missions, but have the option to remove the pilot for riskier or more monotonous tasks like ferrying cargo to forward-deployed troops. There are various levels of human involvement being considered as well; for instance, short of full automation you might have a formation of four helicopters where only the leader is piloted by humans. Things are picking up, and this technology really is going straight from prototypes like RASCAL into the next generation of versions of our current airframes.
There is a difference between pacifism and non-interventionism.
As has been pointed out by the AC, Guess who has been going around slapping other people's cheeks and giving pretty bad excuses for doing so? Are you SERIOUSLY surprised when those people start slapping back after getting slapped for 40 years? The US government continually operates on the idea that, "The best defense is a good offense." That may work for sports, but it's a lousy military strategy and national defense policy.
We need to stop interfering in their affairs, let them govern themselves and within a generation they will be back killing each other as they were before we intervened. Anyone that bothers to come around the world to attack us will be little more than a lethal nuisance that is easily dealt with by law enforcement.
Hey, look everyone, an Atheist who happens to be projecting onto others.
Any idea which is the only country in the Americas has not been involved in a war in the last half century? Costa Rica, which has no military.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin