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Bird-Shaped Drone Symbolizes New Forms Of Covert Surveillance To Come (mirror.co.uk)
One security writer in Somali recently discovered a downed metal drone that had been carefully disguised as a bird, a reminder that drones will bring powerful new forms of surveillance. Slashdot reader Stephen Sellner also shares an article by the CEO of one unmanned systems company who's predicting that the commercial drone industry will create more than 100,000 new jobs and generate more than $82 billion for the U.S. economy, and suggesting "security of industrial areas (shipyard, storage facility, etc.) can now be augmented by drones to provide a quick eye in the sky."
But it may be inevitable that drones will be used in a variety of unexpected ways. Airbus is also testing the use of drones for quality inspections on their commercial aircraft. In Iowa, a drone helped lead first-responders to a man suffering from a heart attack. And the U.S. wildlife service is planning to drop peanut-butter pellets onto northeastern Montana to deliver vaccines to prairie dogs -- so that they can then in turn be eaten by Montana's population of endangered black-footed ferrets. Any predictions about drone news we'll be seeing in the future?
But it may be inevitable that drones will be used in a variety of unexpected ways. Airbus is also testing the use of drones for quality inspections on their commercial aircraft. In Iowa, a drone helped lead first-responders to a man suffering from a heart attack. And the U.S. wildlife service is planning to drop peanut-butter pellets onto northeastern Montana to deliver vaccines to prairie dogs -- so that they can then in turn be eaten by Montana's population of endangered black-footed ferrets. Any predictions about drone news we'll be seeing in the future?
Never mind.
Oh wait, look!
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
These machinations will get better and better, until a roach or mouse sighting will cause alarm on the order of a new level of revulsion.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Did you perhaps mean "bird of prey"?
A friend who does a lot of contract work for the government(*) told me that we, the US, are developing a small gliding-bird drone that can deliver poison through a dart where a normal bird's beak would be.
The use-case is for the bird to perch somewhere waiting (possibly hanging and recharging from power lines), then when the victim is spotted it glides silently towards the person and sticks beak-first into the neck.
It's got perfect deniability - even if someone catches the drone, it doesn't have "made in the USA" anywhere on it, and even if it did you'd still never find out who was controlling it.
It's one facet of our "asymmetrical warfare" plans.
(*) This is a 2nd hand rumor from someone you don't know on the internet, take it with a grain of salt.
Too bad 99% of those jobs will be in overseas manufacturing and the vast majority of that $82 billion will be into the bank accounts of the wealthy.
Oh, don't fret little man, the drones will be used on you so you'll not be left out of the loop.
--- Keep the choice with the user..
How do you tell if something that appears to be a bird is really a bird or a drone disguised as one? If you feel that doesn't matter, what if it is disguised as a bird that is illegal to shoot at, and the excuse that "you thought it was a drone" wouldn't matter one iota if it turned out to be a real bird?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I was thinking it's a crow about to damage my crops!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
A drone-expert friend tells me that it's a commercially-available toy, not some super-duper cutting-edge technology.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
No, he meant a religious bird.
"How do you tell if something that appears to be a bird is really a bird or a drone disguised as one?"
For starters, the only bird type that can hover in one spot is the Hummingbird. If you see a large bird hovering perfectly still in one spot, you can bet your ass it's a drone.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
We'll get our hands on these things too. Better for watching the police, my dear. And without putting yourself within firing range. Sounds good to me..
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
With the exception of the occasional mad man anything evil that gets done is done for the sake of controlling access to or the use of wealth. People don't generally want to watch random blokes for the fun of it (rule 34 excepted). They're looking to hurt you because you're threatening either their money or their master's money.
Rather than worry about a symptom of wide spread institutional evil ( surveillance ) why not attack root causes ( wealth inequality and the desire of a lucky few to preserve the privileges such a system grants them).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Tomorrows headline: "Bird shaped tracking device dropped by drone leads military to insurgent headquarters"
Or to random persons house. No problem, there's plenty of missiles...
Strangely enough, I was watching 'Eye in the Sky', where such a drone was used.
Even stranger, the drone in the film was being used to conduct surveillance on Somalis.
I wonder if the film makers are privy to some informatation that we aren't?
Deal with reality - the world as it is - rather than ideality - the world as you would like it to be.
I know of a local company that has one in production (for a while) that looks like a hummingbird..this hideous pigeon is old news and not news unless we are talking about antiquated hardware. This is nothing and since the hummingbird drone is not exactly a secret I am sure it is also 'old tech'.
For starters, the only bird type that can hover in one spot is the Hummingbird. If you see a large bird hovering perfectly still in one spot, you can bet your ass it's a drone.
Well if you bothered to properly disguise your drone as a bird I'm sure you'd have a program to fly in gentle circles like a bird searching for pray to "hover" over an area. Otherwise it'd be kinda obvious.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Sorry, NOTHING beats the cat copter, well maybe the cat copter chasing the bird drone: https://youtu.be/uJfM23iChzs
I would totally think that thing buzzing in the sky with propellers was a bird. Totally. /s
Kingfishers cannot hover in one spot like a hummingbird, and you wouldn't see a kingfisher hovering way overhead in the air like a hummingbird.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
In any conflict zone, anyone worried about drone surveillance would have a strong incentive to kill as many actual birds as possible, just in case any of them were drones (and to make any actual drones more easily detectable).
If you wanted a way to (further) incentivize the extinction of actual birds, I can't think of a better way then to disguise surveillance drones as birds.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
This is old news. There are even better drones than this one that not only look like birds but flap their wings like birds too.
But do they move through the air like birds?
I would think an easier task would be to mimic a robin or other bird which spends a lot of time on the ground - that would be more easily ignored by the target.
#DeleteChrome
Bad luck for all those kestrels then, being misidentified as drones the world over...
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
Could we make it unambiguously legal to shoot these things as long as they aren't actually in flight, then enact legislation requiring them to look like George Bush Junior and Tony Blair?
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Kestrel.
We are going to see some very confused hawks.
Someone needs to do a study on this. Bird do weird things - will they recognise 'not food' on the first attempted bite, or swallow a bundle of wires and snapped-off plastic bits? If birdlike drones become commonplace (as toys, I'd imagine) then it might have some ecological impact.
Presumably, as another comment has noted, if one were trying to disguise their drone as a bird so that it would not be recognized as a drone, one wouldn't employ flight maneuvers that were obviously impossible for the bird it is disguised as in the first place.
One could employ a gentle circling pattern to achieve a hover-like effect, just as some birds actually might do in nature.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I skimmed through the first 20 minutes of this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
which I assume is the right one, because all you said was "look it up" when you could've been a bit more helpful and given us a link.
Anyway, I skimmed through the first 20 minutes and all I saw were drones that look like planes.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
For starters, the only bird type that can hover in one spot is the Hummingbird.
a) Or the kestrel.
b) Who says a drone disguised as a bird would have to hover?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
That's not hovering, that's gliding on an updraft. It couldn't "hover" inside a gymnasium, a hummingbird could.
Here are some other birds that can hover:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Yes they do, they're called ornithopters. I have one but it looks like a giant dragonfly.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Maybe this plus some silver and gold paint?
https://www.alibaba.com/produc...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
That's not hovering, that's gliding on an updraft. It couldn't "hover" inside a gymnasium, a hummingbird could.
I don't think it's gliding on an updraft, it's just facing into the wind (which is what I think the harrier in your second video is doing).
Anyway, apparently kestrels can hover indoors:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Lots of birds can hover with a small amount of wind. A drone disguised as a kestrel would look perfectly natural hovering over my house.
"Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman