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Droning For Sharks
FreedomFirstThenPeac writes: Apparently Orange County (specifically, Seal Beach area) has found that drones are useful for finding hazards at the beach, the story has a nice drone-shot overhead of a small shark (scale is hard to tell). They also report that it is easy to spot rip tides. The question of the day, how long till someone links imaging processing software with the guidance system so they can get the drones to hover over, and follow along, as sharks patrol off shore? Just another day at the beach, see the shoal of nerds schooling along with their drone controls? They are the ones who are missing all the swimsuit-enhanced normals in the area.
do they have it????
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
"how long till someone links imaging processing software with the guidance system so they__________________?"
This would work best if the drones look like giant hovering sharks.
They seem real eager to get into my boat when I point out the shark to them. With or without their bikini... Geeks win this one!
"how long till someone links imaging processing software with the guidance system so they____obey_____?"
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Not just sharks but everyone in law enforcement out on patrol should be recording their activities so that confrontations with citizens can be reviewed objectively and perhaps avoided altogether. Just because they carry frickin' lasers instead of guns should not make a difference.
The sharks really should have body cams but this is the next best thing.
They will just get all creepy with the normal pictures to pay for more drone time. What are these robots doing to us?
"Some have worried drones could be used to leer at unsuspecting beachgoers or to see inside the homes lining the shore.
The wide angle lenses on the majority of prosumer/consumer devices make concerns over privacy ridiculous. And finally it's not a drone unless it's flying autonomously. Here it's a quadcopter with FPV video.
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And since when is "Apparently..." good enough justification for an article?
Also, these are not drones as they are not autonomous
Also, a real drone will cost a lot more than $1400
Also, a real drone that has the same range as a shark will never be cost effective
Also, fuck slashdot...
Australia already uses drones for shark spotting... While it's not automated yet, they are already working towards that. They are in the process of collecting sample images of sharks in the water for a AI to use for comparison.
and so therefore the sheeple don't like drones
Orange County Sheriff's Office has an approved CoA. too bad it's the Orange County in Florida, not the one in California.
However, that list is as of a while ago. They could well have a CoA by now.
"Normal" isn't a noun, you cretin!
I doubt a normal drone is going to last very long anywhere near the ocean, all that salt spray is will corrode into an early death.
Sure, the salt will destroy them.
Just buy new ones when they go wonky. DJI Phantoms are about a kilobuck. If they last 2 weeks, that's only 25k/year, which isn't much compared to the salary of the lifeguard looking at the controller. And I'll bet if you committed to buy 25 of them a year, you'd get them cheaper.
The real issue is the cost of the operator.
I grew up just South of Seal Beach. Talking to a CG chopper pilot who routinely flew up and down our coast once and he said that if you guys (surfers) could see what I see every day from the air you would never go in the water. Apparently there are quite a few largish sharks out there. Was news to me.
But I instantly got excited about Shark Donuts.
mmmm...donuts.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I was going to mod you up for insightful information, but I had to read the post twice because you split it between the subject and comment fields.
Interesting comment, just a crappy way of communicating it.
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As I am poasting on Slashdot, I am compelled to state the following:
The sharks need frikkin lasers attached to there heads.
There, I said it, you can consider that tick scratched. Nobody needs to say the shark laser "joke" anymore.
"The question of the day, how long till someone links imaging processing software with the guidance system so they can get the drones to hover over, and follow along, as sharks patrol off shore?"
Hopefully drones equipped with lasers to drive them sharks away. It's not fair if only sharks have lasers.
Given the title, I am extremely disappointed that this is not about sharks either being given control of drones, or being converted into cyborg drones. At the very least, it should have been about sharks that go on and on about the same topic for far too long.
According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"Every year around 75 attacks are reported worldwide."
According to http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/02/...
"More than 60,000 people have been killed from 2006 to 2012" related to drug smuggling from Mexico to the US.
So should we have drones looking for sharks? Or drug smugglers (including those who smuggle guns on the return trip)? Is this a fight to come up with the dumbest use for drones outside a Mike Myers movie?
Is this supposed to be intelligible, or is it just the ramblings of a purposeless bot?
And the question of the day before - or at least, the question of the feasibility phase of the programme - is : is swimming at shallow depth a sufficiently common pre-hunting behaviour amongst all types of dangerous sharks in this particular area, that the behaviour is a sufficiently good predictor of attack to be worth the effort.
Or, to generalise it further (because this is not a new discussion), what is the false positive rate (beach alarms blaring "get out of the water", tourists scared and not returning, businesses going bust, but no subsequent attack even amongst the remaining vulnerable population) compared to the false negative rate ("is that a shark, or just ... nah, it's just seaweed" - or electronic version - no alarm, chewed tourist) for this screening test? And yes, I am deliberately using terms comparable to testing medical screens, because this is not a new debate.
While I'm not a shark behaviour specialist, as a scuba diver who first entered the sea in the years when Jaws was still a fresh movie, I have paid a little attention to the subject. Some shark species cruise just below the surface and are highly visible to detection like this. And some don't. Indeed, some individuals of some species would be detectable like this one morning, and change hunting strategies ten minutes later.
The idea has merit - don't get me wrong - but that doesn't mean that it will actually work well enough to be worth the effort on it;s own. Possibly as an adjunct to a "lifeguard drone" service looking for people in trouble in the water, pollution, fights on the beach, etc, it could be justified. But for just this one task - I doubt it would be worth the effort.
There is a good argument to be made that the oceans are the shark's territory, and us humans should be a damned sight more respectful of their right to life liberty and the pursuit of black seal-shaped food. I don't consider the seas to be my own, and I probably spend more time working on them than most people here. Next month my transport to work is likely to change to the extent that I'll need to worry about dying of shark attack instead of hypothermia, if the transport crashes. Concentrates the mind wonderfully, the thought of dying on the way to work.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
[Hat's off to the non-Norwegian Slashdottirs who get the joke.]
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"