UAV / UCAV / LAR (robotit) Uutiset ja jutut

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The TACAD drone is planned to be a glider that can carry up to 500 pounds of supplies. Dropped from a cargo plane orbiting at 35,000 feet safely behind the front lines, the 15:1 glide ratio allows it to cover perhaps 85 miles to its target, guided by GPS and controlled by regular hobby servos.

Here’s the kicker: it’s totally disposable. Built from plywood and designed for exactly one use, the glider simply flies to the landing zone and crash lands. One assumes there will be some kind of provision made for a “controlled flight into terrain” so that the supplies don’t have to be overpackaged or limited to only the most robust items, but even so, there’s no intention to reuse the drone.

One-time use is a huge benefit to TACAD over competing systems, like the US Army’s Joint Precision Airdrop System, which uses GPS-guided paragliders that are expensive enough to demand recovery by the forward units for eventual reuse. JPADS adds to the burden of the soldiers it supplies, since they have to hump the 30-pound units back out of the field, while TACAD demands nothing after its job is done and even provides materials that might prove useful to the soldiers.

Whether either of these systems is ever fielded remains to be seen. I’d put money on at least one of them seeing action — the idea of quickly resupplying dug-in troops from stand-off distances is just too good to pass up for the professionals who ponder logistics for a living. The cynic in me says that like any military project, it’s likely to get larded up with unnecessary complications so the denizens of Congress can be seen as bringing the bacon back home to their districts. TACAD is an idea that derives its power from its simplicity, but even if it does get overcomplicated it’s another great use case for automated delivery.

http://hackaday.com/2017/07/03/automate-the-freight-front-line-deliveries-by-drone/

 

[ctg]

DARPA's FLA program is advancing technology to enable small unmanned quadcopters to fly autonomously through cluttered buildings and obstacle-strewn environments at fast speeds (up to 20 meters per second, or 45 mph) using onboard cameras and sensors as "eyes" and smart algorithms to self-navigate.

Potential applications for the technology include safely and quickly scanning for threats inside a building before military teams enter, searching for a downed pilot in a heavily forested area or jungle in hostile territory where overhead imagery can't see through the tree canopy, or locating survivors following earthquakes or other disasters when entering a damaged structure could be unsafe.

"The goal of FLA is to develop advanced algorithms to allow unmanned air or ground vehicles to operate without the guidance of a human tele-operator, GPS, or any datalinks going to or coming from the vehicle," said JC Lede, the DARPA FLA program manager.

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/S..._their_Way_without_Human_Help_or_GPS_999.html

"Most people don't realize how dependent current UAVs are on either a remote pilot, GPS, or both. Small, low-cost unmanned aircraft rely heavily on tele-operators and GPS not only for knowing the vehicle's position precisely, but also for correcting errors in the estimated altitude and velocity of the air vehicle, without which the vehicle wouldn't know for very long if it's flying straight and level or in a steep turn. In FLA, the aircraft has to figure all of that out on its own with sufficient accuracy to avoid obstacles and complete its mission."

The FLA program is focused on developing a new class of algorithms that enables UAVs to operate in GPS-denied or GPS-unavailable environments-like indoors, underground, or intentionally jammed-without a human tele-operator. Under the FLA program, the only human input required is the target or objective for the UAV to search for-which could be in the form of a digital photograph uploaded to the onboard computer before flight-as well as the estimated direction and distance to the target.

A basic map or satellite picture of the area, if available, could also be uploaded. After the operator gives the launch command, the vehicle must navigate its way to the objective with no other knowledge of the terrain or environment, autonomously maneuvering around uncharted obstacles in its way and finding alternative pathways as needed.

"I was impressed with the capabilities the teams achieved in Phase 1," Lede said.

"We're looking forward to Phase 2 to further refine and build on the valuable lessons we've learned. We've still got quite a bit of work to do to enable full autonomy for the wide-ranging scenarios we tested, but I think the algorithms we're developing could soon be used to augment existing GPS-dependent UAVs for some applications. For example, existing UAVs could use GPS until the air vehicle enters a building, and then FLA algorithms would take over while indoors, while ensuring collision-free flight throughout. I think that kind of synergy between GPS-reliant systems and our new FLA capabilities could be very powerful in the relatively near future."

 

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COLOGNE, Germany — After lawmakers spurned government plans to lease a handful of armed drones from Israel, ministry of defense officials have no choice but to let the topic rest until after national elections in late September.

But the issue remains a priority for the agency led by Ursula von der Leyen, Chancellor Angela Merkel's defense minister. “The requirement still exists,” a spokesman told Defense News on July 5, arguing that the airborne weapons would be used only to protect German troops in “immediate, real danger,” not as instruments of targeted killings in the style of U.S. forces.

The Bundestag's appropriations committee in late June, at the behest of the Social Democratic Party, or SPD, rejected a proposal to lease five Heron TP drones from Israel Aerospace Industries at a cost reportedly around €1 billion (U.S. $1.1 billion). An approval would have been the only chance for the government to get a deal in place for the aircraft before the Sept. 24 election, which could lead to a reshaping of defense priorities.

http://www.defensenews.com/articles/german-mod-rests-its-case-on-armed-drones-for-now

 

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Drone hackers in the UK are busy at work exploiting the application security shortcomings of a major manufacturer to circumvent restrictions, including flight elevation limits. DJI says it has pushed out a firmware update to nip the problem in the bud, but one expert The Register spoke to maintains that hacking is still possible.

The potential for drone hacking can be traced back to a mistake made by DJI in leaving development debug code in its Assistant 2 application. Changes could be made by commenting out one line in a file and setting the debug flag from false to true. The shortcoming exposed a full range of parameters that enabled hackers to turn off safeguards.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/11/dji_drones_app_sec/

 

[ctg]

Naapuri kasailee LAReja (Lethal Autonomous Robot)

The maker of the famous AK-47 rifle is building “a range of products based on neural networks,” including a “fully automated combat module” that can identify and shoot at its targets. That’s what Kalashnikov spokeswoman Sofiya Ivanova told TASS, a Russian government information agency last week. It’s the latest illustration of how the U.S. and Russia differ as they develop artificial intelligence and robotics for warfare.

The Kalashnikov “combat module” will consist of a gun connected to a console that constantly crunches image data “to identify targets and make decisions,” Ivanova told TASS. A Kalashnikov photo that ran with the TASS piece showed a turret-mounted weapon that appeared to fire rounds of 25mm or so.

http://www.defenseone.com/technolog...pons-maker-build-ai-guns/139452/?oref=d-river

Kalashnikov’s new gun isn’t the first reported Russian-made lethal robot. In 2014, officials with the Russian Strategic Missile Force said they would begin deploying armed sentry robots that could autonomously spot and shoot at intruders.

Russian weapons makers see robotics (and the artificial intelligences driving them) as key to future sales, according to Sergey Denisentsev, a visiting fellow at the Center For Strategic International Studies. “There is a need to look for new market niches such as electronic warfare systems, small submarines and robots, but that will require strong promotional effort because a new technology sometimes finds it hard to find a buyer and to convince the buyer that he really needs it, ”Denisentsev said in April.

Already, Russian government information agencies have claimed that Russian-made ground battle robots are securing victories in Syria. Last year, Sputnik reported that that Syrian government forces used a combination of Russian small drones and heavily armed tank robots to kill 70 enemy combatants in Latakia province. But Bellingcat’s Aric Toler revealed the claim as likely false, and definitely poorly sourced. “Sputnik simply rephrased and reposted a crude, fake blog entry from a Russian social network,” he wrote.

 

[SJ]

Naapuri kasailee LAReja (Lethal Autonomous Robot)

http://www.defenseone.com/technolog...pons-maker-build-ai-guns/139452/?oref=d-river

Kysymys kuuluu, että kuinka vaikea mahtaisi olla jallittaa jotakin tuollaista? Jos se ampuu kaikkea mikä liikkuu tietyllä alueella, niin sitä liikettä voidaan varmaan jotenkin järjestää alueelle ja sitten antaa vempaimen ampua lippaat tyhjäksi. Voi myöskin olla, että ne joukot joiden aluetta tuollaisella yritettäisiin suojata eivät saisi yhtään unta kun se LAR pitää meteliä.

 

[ctg]

Jos se ampuu kaikkea mikä liikkuu tietyllä alueella, niin sitä liikettä voidaan varmaan jotenkin järjestää alueelle ja sitten antaa vempaimen ampua lippaat tyhjäksi.

Vaikea tietää koska tuosta projektista ei ole hirveästi ainesta ja me emme ole nähneet noita vehkeitä taistelukentällä. Aika näyttää miten hyvin ne suoriutuu, mutta totuus on kuitenkin se että meidän konfilktissa on suuri mahdollisuus että noita juuri löytyy etulinjasta eikä kasarmilta.

 

[SJ]

Vaikea tietää koska tuosta projektista ei ole hirveästi ainesta ja me emme ole nähneet noita vehkeitä taistelukentällä. Aika näyttää miten hyvin ne suoriutuu, mutta totuus on kuitenkin se että meidän konfilktissa on suuri mahdollisuus että noita juuri löytyy etulinjasta eikä kasarmilta.

Joo, naapuri tarvitsisi niitä ainakin sivustoilla, muuten ei riitä ukkoja etulinjaan tehtävää suorittamaan. Ja tietenkin LAR:eja epäilemättä käytettäisiin myös etulinjassa suorittamaan väkivaltaista tiedustelua.

 

[ctg]

Spoiler: Swarmausta pinnalla ja pinnan alla

Spoiler: Wärtsilän logistiikkabotit

Spoiler: Wifi verkko navigoimisen tukena sisätiloissa liikkuessa

 

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[ctg]

ROFL

A security robot tasked with patrolling an office building in Washington DC has instead driven itself into a water feature.

The bot appears to have been a Knightscope K5, a surveillance bot designed to roll around “parking lots, corporate campuses and hospitals” so it can use its video cameras, anomaly detection, live video streaming and real-time notifications capabilities to inform you if you need to send a human security guard to sort something out.

Knightscope says the bot can find a way through “even the most complex environments”. But not, evidently, the water feature of The Washington Harbour, an office and retail complex in Washington, DC. As the Tweet below shows, the K5 decided to take a dip in said water feature.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/18/knightscope_k5_falls_into_pond/

 

[ctg]

Spoiler

Wings are great for crusing over long distances and carrying heavy loads, but they aren’t that great if your aircraft needs vertical agility. Rotors, on the other hand, are great for vertical agility, but they aren’t that great for long distances and heavy loads. Any aircraft that wants to fly efficiently can be designed for cruising or hovering, but not both.

Lots and lots of people have tried to figure out a way of making some sort of compromise work. Mostly, this involves stapling as many vertical rotors as you have a budget for to a fixed-wing aircraft and just calling it a day: When you want to go up or down, you use the vertical rotors, and the rest of the time, you use whatever other rotors you can afford to have mounted horizontally. If you’re very clever, maybe you come up with a design that uses one set of rotors for both vertical and horizontal flight, either with some kind of rotating wing or with a vehicle that can pitch over in flight; but the fact remains that your design is wasteful—either you have useless rotors when flying horizontally, or useless wings when flying vertically.

At ICRA this year, researchers from the Singapore University of Technology & Design introduced a new kind of flying robot called THOR: Transformable HOvering Rotorcraft. THOR manages to achieve very high structural efficiency by using all of its aerodynamic surfaces in both vertical and horizontal flight modes, transforming from a flying wing into a sort of whole-body spinning bicopter thing that you really need to see to believe.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/...-drone-hovers-and-cruises-with-no-compromises

 

[Tex]

Olisi aika pysäyttää tämä hulluus. 1000 tutkijaa Hawkinsin kanssa jättivät jo aikaa sitten vetoomuksen, ettei tekoälyä saisi laittaa aseisiin. Vaan kun ei kuunnella. Hihkutaan onnesta kun tappavaa voimaa käyttäviä vehkeitä lähetetään liikkeelle omin älyin. Millä niitä hallitaan, millä estetään ihmisten terminointi, koneet eivät näe ihmistä mitenkään säilyttämisen arvoisina, ne oppivat toisiltaan, ja millä niitä vastaan taistellaan kun ne osaa ihmisten taktiikat laskea tuhanteen kertaan ennenkuin edes toimitaan. Helvetin vaarallista ja typerää touhua

 

[ctg]

Auts.

 

[John Hilly]

Israelin itsemurhalennokki kiinnostaa maailmalla.

Global armed forces interested in new Israeli self-destructive drone

A new innovation by Israel Aerospace Industries enables multirotor drones to self-destruct on small fast-moving targets within densely populated urban areas. IDF soldiers carry small armed multirotor drones on their backs that are capable of launching from anywhere towards a terrorist or sniper, eliminating them within seconds. Global armed forces are already showing interest in this invention that will change the battlefield.

One of the greatest challenges in warfare within densely populated areas, where it is difficult to track terrorists, is the desire to eliminate them without harming innocent people. Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) has developed a means capable of accurately hitting small fast-moving targets within urban areas. However, this is no ordinary drone or guided missile, but rather a multirotor drone that hones in on its target and self-destructs upon it.

The small newly developed multirotor drones are armed with two spray grenades. An infantry soldier can carry two such objects in a special backpack: Two multirotor drones that he can launch towards a target from the battlefield. The multirotor drones hover over the target for quite a long period and when the command is given, it destroys the target. This is very effective, for example, in the case of terrorists escaping through a narrow alley or a sniper peeping through a window. If the target was not hit, the multirotor drone can return, have its batteries changed and be launched it once again.

Capable of finding targets within a short amount of time Photo Credit: Israel Aerospace Industries/Channel 2 News

“The greatest part about this weapon is the capability to locate and attack targets that have a very small lifespan,” stated A. from IAI. This greatness is well understood by many militaries throughout the world, whose representatives are coming to Israel in order to be impressed by this sophisticated development and to purchase it. According to foreign publications, the self-destructive drone is already in use within the battlefield: The Azerbaijan army has already used it against Armenia during a war between the two countries, which lead to great losses on the Armenian side.

Video linkissä http://www.jerusalemonline.com/news...uctive-drone-that-eliminates-terrorists-29946

 

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The U.S. Naval Research Lab has been working on its CICADA (Close-In Covert Autonomous Disposable Aircraft) drones since at least 2011. The tiny drones are designed to be carried aloft by other aircraft and dropped, whereupon they’ll use GPS and little fins to glide to within 15 feet of their destination. They can carry a small sensor payload, and they’re designed to be cheap enough that you can use a whole bunch of them all at once. At the Sea Air Space Expo back in April, we checked out the latest MK5 CICADA prototypes, along with a new delivery system that’ll launch 32 of them out of a standardized sonobuoy tube all at once.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/...b-tests-swarm-of-stackable-cicada-microdrones

 

[SJ]

Israelin itsemurhalennokki kiinnostaa maailmalla.

Global armed forces interested in new Israeli self-destructive drone

A new innovation by Israel Aerospace Industries enables multirotor drones to self-destruct on small fast-moving targets within densely populated urban areas. IDF soldiers carry small armed multirotor drones on their backs that are capable of launching from anywhere towards a terrorist or sniper, eliminating them within seconds. Global armed forces are already showing interest in this invention that will change the battlefield.

One of the greatest challenges in warfare within densely populated areas, where it is difficult to track terrorists, is the desire to eliminate them without harming innocent people. Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) has developed a means capable of accurately hitting small fast-moving targets within urban areas. However, this is no ordinary drone or guided missile, but rather a multirotor drone that hones in on its target and self-destructs upon it.

The small newly developed multirotor drones are armed with two spray grenades. An infantry soldier can carry two such objects in a special backpack: Two multirotor drones that he can launch towards a target from the battlefield. The multirotor drones hover over the target for quite a long period and when the command is given, it destroys the target. This is very effective, for example, in the case of terrorists escaping through a narrow alley or a sniper peeping through a window. If the target was not hit, the multirotor drone can return, have its batteries changed and be launched it once again.


Capable of finding targets within a short amount of time Photo Credit: Israel Aerospace Industries/Channel 2 News

“The greatest part about this weapon is the capability to locate and attack targets that have a very small lifespan,” stated A. from IAI. This greatness is well understood by many militaries throughout the world, whose representatives are coming to Israel in order to be impressed by this sophisticated development and to purchase it. According to foreign publications, the self-destructive drone is already in use within the battlefield: The Azerbaijan army has already used it against Armenia during a war between the two countries, which lead to great losses on the Armenian side.

Video linkissä http://www.jerusalemonline.com/news...uctive-drone-that-eliminates-terrorists-29946

Ja niille jotka haikailivat haulikon käyttöä UAV:n torjunnassa, niin tuo olisi nyt sellainen käyttökohde, että siinä UAV epäilemättä tulee tarpeeksi lähelle ammuttavaksi. Ja motivaatiota osua on muutenkin, jos et osu niin se UAV räjähtää sinun sylissä.


Itse tuosta systeemistä, niin onhan tuo aika arvokkaan oloinen tapa tuhota vihollisia, mutta onko tykistötulikaan sitten niin kustannustehokasta?

 

[aj77]

Itsestään lentelevät ja ilman ihmisohjausta toimivat Dronet eivät ilmeisesti ole vielä toiminnassa, mutta testaus on jo kovaa. Sellaisen aseistaminen on kova päätös.

The possibility of life-or-death decisions someday being taken by machines not under the direct control of humans needs to be taken seriously. Over the last few years we have seen a rapid development in the field of drone technology, with an ever-increasing degree of autonomy. While no approved autonomous drone systems are operational, as far as we know, the technology is being tested and developed.

http://www.nato.int/docu/review/201...+nr+drones&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=smc

 

[ctg]

Spoiler: Törmäyksen esto droneissa.

http://www.team-blacksheep.com/products/prod:flarm_buddy

Spoiler: Dronet kriisin hallinnassa

When asked about applications for their new robots, researchers often mention things like “disaster response” and “search and rescue.” But what does that mean? To make things less abstract, or rather, to make things very, very realistic, the University of Southampton, in the U.K., produced this video. It shows what happens when a turbine explodes at a power plant while a school visit is in progress. Don’t worry, it’s a simulated disaster, but the film helps understand how aerial, ground, and water robots can be a huge help in such situations.

https://www.southampton.ac.uk/autonomous-systems/news/2017/06/film-premiere.page?

 

[miheikki]

Ruotsissa saa taas lennättää kuvauskoptereita ilman poikkeuslupaa

• TYKKÄÄ0
• KOMMENTOI0
• JAA:

http://www.kaleva.fi/uutiset/ulkoma...-kuvauskoptereita-ilman-poikkeuslupaa/766602/

ULKOMAAT 1.8.2017 9:43
STT

Ruotsissa saa taas lennättää kamerakopteria ilman poikkeuslupaa. Svenska Dagbladetin mukaan uusi koptereita koskeva laki astui voimaan elokuun ensimmäisenä päivänä.

Viime syksynä Ruotsin korkein hallinto-oikeus rinnasti lennokkeihin kiinnitettävät kamerat valvontakameroiksi, joilla voidaan tarkkailla ihmisiä. Siksi niiden käyttämiseen vaadittiin poikkeuslupaa viranomaisilta. Päätös herätti jo heti tuoreeltaan paljon kritiikkiä.

Svenska Dagbladetin mukaan oikeuden ratkaisu ehti jo vaikuttaa kielteisesti aloihin, joilla kopteritekniikkaa hyödynnetään. Nyt koptereita saa lennättää, kunhan ei kuvaa ihmisiä loukkaavasti.

Linkki juttuun