Archive for the 'Rise of the Machines' Category
Newly Released Drone Records Reveal Extensive Military Flights in U.S.
December 8th, 2012Via: Electronic Frontier Foundation: Today EFF posted several thousand pages of new drone license records and a new map that tracks the location of drone flights across the United States. These records, received as a result of EFF’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), come from state and local […]
And Now… ‘Conservation Drones’
December 8th, 2012Via: Mother Jones: First things first: No, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is not using drones to vaporize poachers. But thanks to a five million dollar grant awarded by Google on Tuesday, the organization is expanding its use of unmanned aerial vehicles to track and deter criminals who illegally hunt endangered animal species around the […]
Robot Completes World Record Pacific Crossing
December 6th, 2012Curious about the propulsion system? It harvests energy from the passing waves. Check this out: Via: Scientific American: Surviving stormy weather and a shark attack, the Wave Glider just entered the record books for the longest autonomous trip ever taken. On his first journey across the Pacific Ocean, Papa Mau was bitten by a shark, […]
U.S. Army Demonstrates Black Hawk with Autonomous Flight and Landing Capabilities
December 6th, 2012Via: al.com: A specially equipped Black Hawk was recently used to demonstrate the helicopter’s ability to operate on its own. In the first such test of its type, the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Research’s Development and Engineering Center, based at Redstone Arsenal, flew the Black Hawk over Diablo Mountain Range in San Jose, Calif. […]
CyPhy Works Reveals Tethered UAV
December 5th, 2012It’s, “Impervious to weather, tracking and interception.” Hmm. How about scissors or 00-Buckshot? Via: Engadget: A new venture from an iRobot co-founder called CyPhy Works has borne fruit in the form of two flying drones dedicated to surveillance duty. The first, called Ease, is a mere foot in diameter by 16-inches tall and can fly […]
Attack of the Drones
December 4th, 2012Via: Journeyman Pictures: More: Robot Wars ‘Do we really want robots that can lie to us?’
The Secret to Iranian Drone Technology? Just Add Photoshop
November 30th, 2012Via: The Atlantic Wire: Earlier this month, Iran’s news agency provided visual evidence that its government had figured out to make a fancy new drone that could take off and land vertically. What they didn’t tell us is that they used Photoshop to make it stop taking off from the roof of Japan’s Chiba University, […]
Sentry System Combines a Human Brain with Computer Vision
November 30th, 2012I’ve posted this one at least a couple of time over the years, but in case you missed it… Via: MIT Technology Review: Sentry duty is a tough assignment. Most of the time there’s nothing to see, and when a threat does pop up, it can be hard to spot. In some military studies, humans […]
Cambridge University Center Will Study Technologies that Pose ‘Extinction-Level’ Risks to Humanity
November 26th, 2012Flashback 2000: Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us Via: Cambridge University: A philosopher, a scientist and a software engineer have come together to propose a new centre at Cambridge to address developments in human technologies that might pose “extinction-level” risks to our species, from biotechnology to artificial intelligence. … While few would deny the benefits […]
A Dangerous Future of Killer Robots
November 26th, 2012Via: Washington Post: The use of drones to kill suspected terrorists is controversial, but so long as a human being decides whether to fire the missile, it is not a radical shift in how humanity wages war. Since the first archer fired the first arrow, warriors have been inventing ways to strike their enemies while […]
