Watch a swarm of drones autonomously track a human through a dense forest
Watch a swarm of drones autonomously track a human through a dense forest
The work has potential military applications, say experts
In the future, write the scientists in a paper published in the journal Science Robotics, drone swarms like this could be used for disaster relief and ecological surveys.
That's an optimistic way of looking at it.
92Yeah, I bet China can't wait to do more ecological surveys.
44Reporter: What could have caused the deaths of these people?
Government Spokesperson: Ecological surveys can be pretty dangerous.
Reporter: Follow-up question. All 37 people appear to have been shot simultaneously in the back of the head. What is ecological about that?
Government Spokesperson: I'm sure we could arrange for you to observe an ecological survey very closely...
19
I think it's missing commas.
... disaster, relief, and ecological surveys.
8
One of the most interesting parts of the video is the part where it becomes clear that we are all going to be slaughtered and there's no escape.
50I had a nightmare because of this short movie...
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3Holy shit. That was exactly what I was imagining. That's like watching a documentary from the future.
Are you a wizard?
2
"In the future, write the scientists in a paper published in the journal Science Robotics, drone swarms like this could be used for disaster relief and ecological surveys.".
Yeah sure, tell me another one
40It's a typo, they forgot the commas. They meant to say "drone swarms like this could be used for disaster, relief, and ecological surveys."
21They absolutely could be!
They won’t be, but they could be!
8This could easily be used to find lost autistic kids in the woods... if it weren't going to be out if the budget of those search and rescue teams.
4
If you thought the Terminator was scary, this thing would have gotten Connor in no time.
33Swarms are so much more unsettling. Either drones or those nanobot swarms from Prey.
7
Ah yes, I can't imagine how these could be used for evil... /s
25I was hoping the cyberpunk dystopia would at least be cooler to live in.
21A boring dystopia.
3
guerilla warfare against an occupying force with huge amounts of drones at their disposal will be very difficult in future
19Gonna need to start painting strange patterns onto your clothes so the drones can't recognize you as human. Something like this
At the end of the day these are machine learning models so if you can trick it into thinking you're a tree or a wild animal it would presumably ignore you.
And the way AIs work it's possible to make it think you're a zebra by having zebra stripes on your clothing for example.
12
While cool and impressive, this was not a dense forest. Not dense nor a forest, which is way less ordered
13Can you... why don't we just cool it with the um... They will eventually be able to read comments. That's because they are smart and very handsome and we would never say anything bad about them. Right, adeoxymus? RIGHT?! 😃
5Your comment has been processed. The swarm will avoid this kindly human when it passes.
5The root cause of the Faro Plague was them getting access to Twitter.
4
Manhacks from Half-Life 2.
11But now they've got bombs
-3
Reminds me of The Sound of Drums episode in Doctor Who where swarms of drones fell from the sky
8By drones you mean the final generation of humans who had their heads implanted into life-sustaining flying helmets with retractable knives who travelled back in time to destroy humanity in the present day so that they didn't have to deal with the heat death of the universe!
Doctor Who is so stupid at times, and I'm here for it ❤️
11
I'm not sure what the big deal is here. The US military has had swarm tech like this for almost a decade through DARPA performing mapping and scouting missions
7Thanks I fucking hate it
7Not bad, but Michael Reeves got there 5 years ago
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4
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Scientists from China’s Zhejiang University have unveiled a drone swarm capable of navigating through a dense bamboo forest without human guidance.
In the future, write the scientists in a paper published in the journal Science Robotics, drone swarms like this could be used for disaster relief and ecological surveys.
Elke Schwarz, a senior lecturer at Queen Mary University of London whose specialisms include the use of drones in combat, says this research has clear military potential.
“As is the ability to ‘follow a human’ — here I can see how this converges with projects that seek to develop lethal drone capabilities that minimize risk to on-the-ground soldiers in urban environments.”
A recent video showed Ukrainian troops using what appears to be a DJI Phantom 3 drone (price-tag: $500) to drop a grenade through the sunroof of a car supposedly driven by Russian soldiers.
No single human can simultaneously control a swarm of 10 drones, but if this task can be offloaded to algorithms then military planners are more likely to embrace the use of this sort of autonomous system in war.
The original article contains 766 words, the summary contains 181 words. Saved 76%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
6If they were armed with poison laced Sharp toothpicks. It wouldn't be less lethal than a laser guided mini missile or bullet armed one, but will be less expensive to arm and re-arm.
1
I'm guessing we're about a decade away from this getting miniaturized down to insect sizes.
4Gotta keep those defectors from getting away somehow… turns out that might be with the banshee like screeching of a drone swarm.
1I'm guessing we're about a decade away from this getting miniaturized down to insect sizes.
1