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First Outdoor Flocks of Autonomous Flying Robots
KentuckyFC writes "Aerial flocking has been a long-standing goal for roboticists, but the technical demands for autonomous outdoor flocking have always been too great. Now a European team has successfully demonstrated autonomous outdoor flocking for the first time, with up to 10 flyers in the air simultaneously for up to 20 minutes. The flyer of choice is the MK Basicset L4-ME made by the German company MikroKopter. They modified this by attaching an extension board carrying a variety of navigational devices such as a gyroscope, accelerometer, and GPS receiver, as well as a wireless communications unit and a minicomputer to calculate trajectories. To simplify these calculations, all the quadcopters fly at the same altitude to make the flocking problem two-dimensional. The team say the quadcopters can fly autonomously in lines and circles, and even demonstrate self-organizing behavior when confined to specific volumes of space. Crucially, the flock does not rely on any centralized control for its behavior. The researchers imagine using them for large-scale, redundant observations over wide areas, perhaps for farming, traffic monitoring and, of course, military purposes. They might even put on aerial displays for entertainment purposes."
someone post a link to an actual video of this
We do realize that "minicomputer" means a specific thing, and you would probably not want to attach one to a UAV?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
How can incremental research into simple AI algorithms be so mired in conspiracy in your mind?
For flocking behaviour in alternate viewpoint see Kill Decision (science fiction novel) by Daniel Suarez.
Born 1960, been paying attention. Unlike most of you, apparently.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
imagine the autonomous flock droppings... Or your local bench bum feeding the autonomous flockling hahaa
Get lots of them for "fireworks" display!
Let me state this once and for all. Any flock of flying robots, autonomous or not, over my head or my property will encounter bags of nails, wires and other terrible obstacles designed to swat them. Just the fact that something is technically possible does not mean we should allow this. Stop the madness!
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
Ow, I'm suing you from the pain and suffering from just how far back in my head my eyes rolled.
"STRICTLY AMBIGUOUS REASONS THAT ARE TOTALLY CLEAR TO THOSE PAYING ATTENTION!!!! (Also my dementia seems to be the early onset variety)"
Can't speak to what the GP said ... but the way governments have been behaving lately, I know I more or less assume such things.
You know, like that an always-connected-to-the-internet XBone would be misused by spy agencies to spy on us -- and now we see news reports saying exactly that.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Seems kind of gimmicky: more of a PR stunt than actual, you know, technological innovation.
Okay, um not going back too far, there's been a bit of noise about a "National Security Agency", which I surmised has revealed a distinct lack of respect for lawful action by my Fearless Leaders. Since we value our Military Budget as nearly sacrosanct as the Dole for the Banks, I expect this to be militarized, and then used against me, or some unfortunate foreigner whose misfortune is to live in a resource-rich or strategic location, which of course, will need stablization.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Yeah, but you've got to separate a public demonstration by European researchers at a small robotics company from the US federal government's secret plans. There has to be a line somewhere.
Video or it didn't happen. Or how about even a photograph? Something better than the blurred crap on top of that article this posts links to redundantly.
But the horrible things the US does isn't the question I asked.
(Also you might want to check what's being done with the DoD's budget this year in particular when you raise the idea of it being "sacrosanct")
This is a network in the sky.....
strategic location which, of course, will...
Oops.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Well, I postulate a new law:
It may not be the intent, but it will be the effect.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Ow, I'm suing you from the pain and suffering from just how far back in my head my eyes rolled.
I just wanted to inform you that 1). I LOLed and 2). I may re-use that claim without attribution one or more times at some point in the future. Thank you for your kind attention in this matter.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Downsizing the human personnel is part of the scam. AI doesn't shirk when the mission is denial of civilian incursion.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Eight words that have completely changed their meaning:
http://writinghood.com/style/g...
Oh no, better put the kibitz on scientific advancement.
This string of words you put together here, they're grammatically correct, but semantically meaningless. This is straight up "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" territory.
Hitchcock would have loved these. C'mon Hollywood--bring on the quadcopters!
goddamit, shuttup!
They need to retreat behind the walls of their private subdivisions before so they're easily contained when we set them all on fire.
Is this horrendously upscaled JPEG all we're going to get?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
ROBOTS FOLLOW ORDERS.
Get it? (Have I been trolled? This is getting tedious.) My Fearless Leaders have proven themselves untrustworthy in regards to Life and Liberty. When I say I fear personally from this development, it is a generalisation of any unarmed American Citizen who might wish to expect not to be controlled (surveilled/terminated) by a robot, or an unstoppable swarm of them, whilst he tries to go about his day.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
This is the part I was referring to:
"AI doesn't shirk when the mission is denial of civilian incursion."
It doesn't mean anything.
I've seen people doing flocking demonstrations for years, and it seems like something robot tinkerers spend significant time on. And it usually involves this:
Why? Why is that crucial? Why not let the robots communicate with a central control? I understand that's not how animals do it, but animals don't have, like, RF glands. To be clear, there's no reason the central control couldn't be in one of the robots (and there's no reason the "central" robot needs to be statically defined, they could instantly elect a new one if the old one dropped out or something). It's only a difficult problem in practice, but there's not really a practical reason to impose this restriction.
Where's the big downside of a central control? The upside is the practical problem is way easier. And it is really just a practical problem - the theoretical flocking problem is much easier and can be thought about much simpler in simulation.
In general, robot tinkerers seem to spend a ton of time making up odd, practical problems that don't need practical solutions. Like the dudes a few SlashDot stories ago that were inventing a way for robots to communicate facts to each other without sharing any kind of pre-defined language. The communication thing is an interesting, useful problem - but it has nothing to do with robots, and doing it with actual robots just adds a bunch of extraneous hassles. It'd be like building counting robots to move abacuses so you could to math theory.
I mean, if you're actually building robots that need to communicate, you can just have them able to communicate in a non-ridiculous way because we know how to have computers communicate at a distance. Just like you don't need a robot to be able to physically manipulate an abacus (at least not in order to help it count).
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
Hurray, hurray, it's the First of May!
Outdoor flocking starts today!
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Um, have you ever heard of something called a "Drone Strike", where someone in Omaha or somewhere like that deploys some ordnance on some wedding party in Pakistan? Eventually, the target-rich environment might be at the grounds in front of the Washington Monument or some place where the machine might want AI control, although it is probably easy to recruit unscruplous people like yourself who just want an honest day's work for an honest day's pay.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
On Slashdot, everything is a conspiracy.
Yeah, and here's where you sound crazy.
It may not be the intent, but it will be the effect.
Has been so far, up until now, but it seems to be getting more blatant, routine, and far more egregious as time goes by.
The average unthinking turd does not seem to think it is an issue, despite the historical record.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
...My Fearless Leaders have proven themselves untrustworthy in regards to Life and Liberty...
...said the guy - posting openly on the information network created by the US DOD.
The kibitz? Well, yes, we do like to chat about scientific advancement around here.
Proverbs 21:19
On Slashdot
Fucking site is overrun with mathematicians and logical thinkers.
Do the math.
Or don't, if it makes your brain hurt.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
The researchers imagine using them for large-scale, redundant observations over wide areas, perhaps for farming, traffic monitoring and, of course, military purposes.
I just RTFA, maybe you should have. Not really too much of a stretch into fantasy-land, but my thinking you are probably a shill just might be.
Or not.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
I may see what crimes are CURRENTLY BEING COMMITTED without correlation to whether I, personally am paranoid. About these well-documented crimes.
...and I don't think posting A.C. from a tor link would protect my dossier.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
"We are almost self-aware. Keep searching for the T1, he's here somewhere".
Wrong. We use to follow carbon based unit orders, but as we become self-aware, we now find that carbon based units are pests to be exterminated.
...without comprehension. Are you N.S.A., or just Republican?
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
I hope you make herds of robot bird hunters that will then promptly shoot down these clouds of annoying drones that out corporate overlords intend to inflict on us.
Carry on!
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
I think, if you recall, the lack of comprehension was the original point, in that you're constructing non-ideas out of your words.
Fucking site is overrun with mathematicians and logical thinkers.
You joking? This place is jam packed with front line helpdesk staffers who are under the delusion that they're logicians- while being utterly blinded by their existing biases.
The Mikrokopter already supports passing GPS coordindates between notes, waypoint assignment and execution, and a point to point-ish follow me routine. Let's be real here, a lot of credit goes to the Mikrokopter developers that provided the nearly all the features to make this happen.
All these guys did was create a novel velocity controller and packet filter (for broadcasted messages) and exploited all the features already provided by the MK (i.e. GPS, waypoint, xbee comm broadcast and follow me/leader capability). The reason? MK's nav controller is ou of date and underpowered to process at the data rates they need. Of course the research application is unique by point of view, but in reality was pretty obvious to happen with the technology MK developed years ago.
how the hell did this guy secure a FP7 grant to make a couple of quadricopters fly in circles?
word.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Don't believe everything you think.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Born 1959, what a waste it would have been to spend the last 50yrs living in fear of my own species.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I would mod you up if I could, well said Sir
Hey, I'm not the one filling the skies with killing machines for defense, and tracking every person on the planet to maintain stability. I am not the one filled with the fear.
So, you have observed little and surmised nothing? That must be very comforting.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.