Rise of the Drones

AUVSI President and CEO Michael Toscano appeared alongside MIT's Missy Cummings to discuss the state of the technology. Integrating unmanned aircraft into the National Airspace System will create more than 100,000 jobs, particularly in agriculture, Toscano said, and Cummings said the issue with integration is now more about psychological than technological barriers.

A commercial revolution will take place in agriculture, Cummings said, and the United States is already behind.

"Japan basically does all its crop dusting with UAVs. An entire country," Cummings said.

She predicted that another revolution, that of unmanned cargo delivery, is already taking shape in Afghanistan in the form of the K-Max unmanned helicopter, which now supplies cargo to deployed soldiers and Marines. 

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Another ongoing and growing use of unmanned aircraft is for monitoring wildlife, their habitats and the poachers who are killing some of them in record numbers, said Carter Roberts, the president and CEO of the World Wildlife Fund.

Groups like the WWF simply don't always have good information about what's happening on the ground in remote locations and have started using UAS to track animals, discover poachers and then follow them back to their traders.

Privacy issues rarely come into play, because the areas are so remote and the systems help give a small technological edge against the poachers, who are better funded and better equipped, the said.

"We do not want to document the demise of nature," but instead use these systems to get real-time information into the hands of governments who can help the wildlife, Roberts said. 

Chinese aerospace firms have developed dozens of drones. Analysts say that although China still trails the U.S.

"China is following the precedent set by the U.S. The thinking is that, `If the U.S. can do it, so can we. They're a big country with security interests and so are we'," said Siemon Wezeman, a senior fellow at the arms transfers program at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in Sweden, or SIPRI. "The justification for an attack would be that Beijing too has a responsibility for the safety of its citizens. There needs to be agreement on what the limits are," he said.

To improve maize yields

Skywalker is a complex aerial phenotyping platform, a remote-controlled plane provided with an advance flight system which do not require previous knowledge of aeromodelism. Spectral (visible and near infrared) reflectance and thermal imagery cameras were fitted to the wings; they allow evaluating crops’ growth, temperature and available soil water of large numbers of maize varieties in only a few minutes. This data will be used to improve the efficiency of maize breeding and speed up the development of drought and low nitrogen tolerant maize varieties for some of the poorest farmers in the world.

The plane ranges from 30 to 45 minutes, and can fly at over fly at over 600-meter with an average speed of 45 kilometres per hour. Take-off and landing, as well as flight plan (way, height, etc.), can be automatically programmed previously.

NASA has found a good use for three military UAVs — in this case, Aerovironment RQ-14 Dragon Eye drones — on loan from the U.S. Marine Corps. Equipped with sensors and cameras, the drones were sent on 10 separate flights into the miasma of sulfur dioxide rising up from the crater of the volcano known as Turrialba near San Jose in Costa Rica.

The overall hope is that the data collected by the drones will form computer models that can help safeguard airspace systems, improve climate predictions, and minimize the dangers for those who live near volcanoes. Of course, even drones would be useless if a volcano erupted in the middle of Los Angeles.

Matthew Fladeland, airborne science manager at NASA’s Ames Research Center, summed things up:

“This project is great example of how unmanned aircraft can be used for beneficial civilian purposes — in this case for better understanding Earth system processes and the impact of volcanism on our atmosphere. By taking these retired military tools, we can very efficiently and effectively collect measurements that improve NASA satellite data and aviation safety.”

It’s not the Bat Signal, but if you’re a Star Trek fan, it’s even better. And if you’re a geeky Star Trek fan that’s really into cutting edge technology – that was deliberately redundant – you’re really going to love this. Just days ago the people of London were shocked to see, seemingly blinking out of nowhere, a 300-foot high Star Trek logo suspended in the dark night sky. Of course, were they anything like Spock they would have quickly concluded that the logo must have been produced by a swarm of 30 LED-carrying quadcopters.

And indeed they would be correct. The starlight logo was the result of a collaboration between Ars Electronic FutureLab and Ascending Technologies to promote Parmount’s “Star Trek – Into Darkness” that opens in movies theaters May 9th. The quadcopters, orSpaxels as they’re called, rose up near London’s famed Tower Bridge in the early evening hours of March 23. As pretty as the sight was, a lot of data crunching went into doing justice to the sacred emblem.

Governmental use of unmanned surveillance drones has inspired a lot of concern about privacy, but New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg thinks the battle's already over. In a radio interview this week, Bloomberg said essentially that drones are an inevitable part of our future (and maybe our present), comparing them to the thousands of cameras already located around Manhattan. "What's the difference whether the drone is up in the air or on the building?" he asked. "We're going into a different world, uncharted... you can't keep the tide from coming in."

Striking a tone more of resignation than endorsement, Bloomberg said that our future includes more visibility and less privacy. Face recognition will be integrated into the drone surveillance, and he wondered aloud whether a drone is that much more invasive than someone standing outside your home. Bloomberg did say legislation is necessary, but warned against hasty action, saying "these are long-term, serious problems."

Charles Eide and Mike Danielson have been flying radio controlled aircraft since they little kids growing up in the same neighborhood.

By mounting stabilized cameras onto the bellies of the drone aircraft, Eide and Danielson can offer customers a bird’s-eye view of anything from construction sites, to city attractions, to real estate listings.

“It helps sell houses, which is really in my opinion a huge economic impact in the Twin Cities — helps houses move faster,” Eide said.

Business was booming, until a call came from the Minneapolis office of the Federal Aviation Administration. They were simply told to ground their commercial use of the aircraft. Turns out, current regulations don’t allow unmanned aircraft for commercial purposes.

Business was booming, until a call came from the Minneapolis office of the Federal Aviation Administration. They were simply told to ground their commercial use of the aircraft. Turns out, current regulations don’t allow unmanned aircraft for commercial purposes.

The impact of drones on privacy and national security remain matters of intense debate, but the economic impact, however, is becoming clearer by the day.

Private-sector drones will create more than 70,000 jobs within three years and will pump $82 billion into the U.S. economy by 2025, according to a major new study commissioned by the industry’s leading trade group, the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International(AUVSI). The study assumes that drones are fully integrated into the national airspace by 2015, in line with the current schedule set by Congress.

But the motivation behind Tuesday’s report runs deeper than just dollars and cents. With more than 20 states considering bills to limit what drones can do — including a two-year moratorium on all government use in Virginia — and at least a half-dozen similar measures being kicked around in Congress, the industry faces an uncertain future.

If you've checked out the news these past few (or many) months, you've probably noticed some news about drones: Drones used by the CIA to vaporize suspected terrorists. Drones used by the United States military. Drones that deliver food. Drones used by cops. Drones possibly violating the US Constitution. Drones protecting wildlife. Drones in pop culture. Maybe this has left you with some burning questions about these increasingly prominent flying robots. Here's an easy-to-read, non-wonky guide to them—we'll call it Drones For Dummies.

Before drones become commonplace in Oregon skies, the state Legislature should take carefully measured steps to protect public privacy and safety from threats posed by both public- and private-sector use of the unmanned aircraft.

In Oregon, Sen. Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene, and Rep. John Huffman, R-The Dalles, have introduced separate bills that would, among other things, make it a crime to use drones to fire bullets or missiles or to spy on people. Prozanski recently explained to The (Portland) Oregonian newspaper that he drafted his legislation, Senate Bill 71, in part because “the last thing I think people want to do is look outside their picture window or their bedroom window and see a drone.”

Prozanski’s and Huffman’s concerns about the need to regulate the domestic use of drones by public agencies, private companies and, for that matter, private citizens are valid — especially in the absence of anything resembling comprehensive federal regulations.

Two start-ups want to replace road transport with internet-style technology and swarms of tiny autonomous helicopters.

The Matternet concept grew out of lengthy brainstorming sessions last summer at Singularity University, which is located at the NASA Research Park campus in Silicon Valley. The University was founded by Dr. Peter Diamandis, founder of the X-Prize Foundation, and Dr. Ray Kurzweil, who is known for his work in artificial intelligence and transhumanism.

One of those involved in those sessions was Andreas Raptopoulos, an engineer with a life-long love of flying vehicles.

"In the course, they asked us to come up with solutions to some of the globe's grand challenges," says Raptopoulos. "And one of those was alleviating poverty."

Quadcopter swarm

The more the group thought about the problem of poverty, the more they felt it was, in large part, caused by the fact that millions of people are cut off, literally, from the global economy because of a lack of delivery infrastructure.

"The concept of using roads to move stuff around is a very, very old concept," Raptopoulos tells me. "The US has now more than  miles of roads. But should Africa try to replicate that? It is expensive, and it destroys the environment."
 
Eventually, the group considered the merits of an unconventional delivery system. Why not, they thought, use a network of unmanned aerial drones to move physical objects the way the internet carries small packets of information through various routes, and then puts all those pieces together again at the end?

“That’s when the idea clicked for me,” says Mint Wongviriyawong, who was also a member of the group. “If you could use these UAVs to transport things from point-to-point, you could transport a lot of loads, autonomously, within a shorter time frame, and it could be done cheaply.”

A new global campaign to persuade nations to ban “killer robots” before they reach the production stage is to be launched in the UK by a group of academics, pressure groups and Nobel peace prize laureates.

Robot warfare and autonomous weapons, the next step from unmanned drones, are already being worked on by scientists and will be available within the decade, said Dr Noel Sharkey, a leading robotics and artificial intelligence expert and professor at Sheffield University. He believes that development of the weapons is taking place in an effectively unregulated environment, with little attention being paid to moral implications and international law.

The Stop the Killer Robots campaign will be launched in April at the House of Commons and includes many of the groups that successfully campaigned to have international action taken against cluster bombs and landmines. They hope to get a similar global treaty against autonomous weapons.

Tracy McVeigh, The Observer

24 Feb 2013

Lincoln probably would have loved drones, but may have held off using them to kill for strategic reasons

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First off, Lincoln was obsessed with military technology and innovation, so there’s little question that he would have been intrigued by drones, had they been invented in the 1860s. He often personally witnessed demonstrations of new inventions and pushed for their advancement and field testing through the War Department bureaucracy, in part by promoting officers who held a similar love of innovation. Under his tenure, the Union became one of the world’s first militaries to use repeating rifles (a vast improvement over the single-shot muzzle-loaders it replaced), rifled artillery, machine guns, rockets, armored “ironclad” warships, and torpedoes, and he made advanced strategic use of railroads and especially the telegraph.

He would have loved to have had drones’ surveillance power, as he championed the unprecedented use of balloons to spy on the enemy. When the aging head of the Army initially rejected the balloon idea, Lincoln personally marched inventor Thaddeus Lowe to the War Department and declared that he would be head of the new Aeronautics Corps for the Army.  “I have pleasure in sending you this first dispatch ever telegraphed from an aerial station and in acknowledging indebtedness to your encouragement for the opportunity of demonstrating the availability of the science of aeronautics in the military service of the country,” Lowe telegraphed to the president from a balloon over the National Mall.

But obviously drones did not exist in Lincoln’s day. So what about some kind of analogous technology that could safely kill enemies without a battle. Would Lincoln have been morally and legally comfortable with that?

Warfare is no stranger to world history. It has become a byproduct of life itself, though is becoming less of a presence as greater activities emerge, i.e. new developing markets, scientific research, and exponentially growing technologies.

 U.S. anti-war activists and stockholders of Boeing have joined forces in opposition to the company’s construction of drones being used for imperialist war mongering. In their show of opposition, they pointed out not only the thousands of lives being decimated as a result of drone strikes from Yemen to Afghanistan, but also the millions of dollars being wasted in the construction of these killer drones, rather than being spent on more important things like our education system.

Hundreds of U.K. citizens have taken up the cause against drone warfare as well. Recently over 600 activists came together and marched in opposition to what they deemed as “drone sharing” between the U.K. and U.S. governments and military. Not to mention opposition to their own govt’s role in drone strikes throughout the ongoing war in Afghanistan.

B. J. Murphy
Ethical Technology
Posted: May 3, 2013

Electro-optics designers at the BAE Systems Spectral Solutions segment in Honolulu are developing a prototype laser-based mine- and obstacle-detection system to help Navy and Marine Corps forces avoid threats on invasion beaches.

BAE Systems is developing the laser sensor for mine-detection prototype under terms of a $20 million contact announced Monday from the Office of Naval Research (ONR) in Arlington, Va.

BAE Systems is developing an advanced prototype system to detect mines and obstacles in the near-shore waters for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. The laser-based systems will provide 24-hour capability.

Residents of Auvergne, a province in south central France, may soon receive their daily paper by drone.

According to a blog post published yesterday, local postal service La Poste Groupe has been working for several years to modernize its delivery processes. A plan has been hatched to implement paper delivery by drone in early May with the help of local volunteers, and tests are already underway.

The drone is a quadricopter, which can be controlled by iPod touch, iPhone, iPad and Android devices, and costs over $300. It is manufactured by Parrot.com, a French wireless devices maker that also announced a partnership with La Poste this morning.

We have not heard back from Parrot.com after reaching out for comment. It’s not quite April Fools — but there are legal issues to consider with this insane (but awesome) idea

Considering the pace of golf, it’s quite possible that some day autonomous multicopters could hover above golfers and help them analyze their swing. That may seem excessive, but golf isn’t necessarily a sport for the frugal, now is it?

An anti-hunting group says it plans to use remote control aircraft in a bid to gather evidence of hunts breaking the law.

Chief executive at the League Against Cruel Sports, Joe Duckworth, said: "There is a war in the countryside and whilst there are still individuals determined to flout the law and seek new ways to avoid detection, the league will continue to explore safe, tested and innovative technology to further our charitable aim of ending cruelty to animals in the name of sport."

The company says it won't knock drones down, but will stop them from 'completing their mission.'

The company, called Domestic Drone Countermeasures, was founded in late February because some of its engineers see unmanned aerial vehicles—which are already being flown by law enforcement in some areas and could see wider commercial integration into American airspace by 2015—as unwanted eyes in the sky.

The company will sell land-based boxes that are "non-offensive, non-combative and not destructive." According to the company, "drones will not fall from the sky, but they will be unable to complete their missions."

Our blind faith in technology combined with a false sense of infallible righteousness continues unabated. Reuters correspondent David Rohde recently wrote:

“The Obama administration’s covert drone program is on the wrong side of history. With each strike, Washington presents itself as an opponent of the rule of law, not a supporter. Not surprisingly, a foreign power killing people with no public discussion, or review of who died and why, promotes anger among Pakistanis, Yemenis and many others.”

A special report from the Council on Foreign Relations last month, “Reforming U.S. Drone Strike Policies,” quotes “a former senior military official” saying, “Drone strikes are just a signal of arrogance that will boomerang against America.” The report notes that, “The current trajectory of U.S. drone strike policies is unsustainable … without any meaningful checks — imposed by domestic or international political pressure — or sustained oversight from other branches of government, U.S. drone strikes create a moral hazard because of the negligible risks from such strikes and the unprecedented disconnect between American officials and personnel and the actual effects on the ground.”

Sorry, Sushi/Massage Guru at Google: you no longer have the coolest tech job in America. That honor will belong to the future staff at the planned Point Mugu UAV installation in paradisiacal California.

With bases like Drone Zone Malibu, the Navy will be able to remotely "fly out over the open ocean, find and track ships, targets of interest. That could be potential adversaries, terrorists, whatever the [Navy] needs [to find]." So: an omnipresent maritime eye could spot potential threats—or anything, really—over the waters, and then beam back electronic signatures and video streams to the mainland, where the next step will be made.

Drones in vacation spots are an inevitability. The idea of a beachside xanadu conducting unceasing, expensive, militarized robot flights might sound strange, but it isn't. There will be more bases like that at Point Mugu, spreading around the world like sunburn. There will be drones in California, drones in Texas, drones in Paris, all part of the Pentagon's vision of reshaping its military omnipresence around "lily pads"—light, decentralized bases that house specialized forces and, of course, drones. Ready to buzz and strike whenever, capable of spying for trouble always.

lilly pad strategy: http://www.thenation.com/article/168898/militarys-new-lily-pad-strategy#

The buzz around drones has intensified in recent months. The FAA Reauthorization bill that was signed into law last year directs the FAA to develop regulations for the testing and licensing of commercial drones by 2015. Meanwhile, PBS aired a NOVA episode last month on drones titled “Rise of the Drones", and this week TIME Magazine published a cover story with the same title. I encourage you to read and watch all of these sources to get the full picture of what’s happening with this technology.

Rise of the Drones: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/military/rise-of-the-drones.html  (the segment beginning at 38:55 is particularly interesting)

TIME cover story: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2135132,00.html

So, how might drones transform supply chain and logistics processes? In a blog posting earlier this week, Kevin O’Meara (former logistics executive at Whirlpool, now with Breakthrough Fuel) wrote that drones “could revolutionize air freight delivery in the package space,” particularly in servicing small, less-densely populated areas. The most visionary idea I’ve seen, however, comes from Matternet, which aims to “do for physical transportation what the Internet did for the flow of information.”

Kevin O’Meara's blog post: http://10xlogistics.blogspot.com.au/2013/02/a-drone-delivers-your-package.html?spref=tw

Matternet: http://matternet.us/

Adrian Gonzalez

06 Feb 2013

Remote-controlled drones that can record video footage are being sold in large retail stores, alarming privacy experts who say they could be used to spy on people.

Australian Privacy Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim is cautious about the growing use of camera drones.

''It is concerning that this type of equipment can be easily purchased and used by individuals, potentially without any limitation on their use,'' said Mr Pilgrim, who recently wrote to the Attorney-General raising his concerns.

As Mr Pilgrim points out, under Australia's 1988 Privacy Act, private sector organisations with a turnover of less than $3 million are not subject to regulation, leaving plenty of scope for abuse.

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The executive director of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems Australia, Peggy MacTavish, said people using drones were subject to privacy and public safety laws, including the Civil Aviation Safety Authority's regulations for unmanned systems.

''Our membership ranges from the multinational corporations … right down to individuals who want to fly for recreation,'' she said. ''Even if it's recreational there are rules and regulations that apply.''

Ms MacTavish confirmed that drones were increasingly being sold by Australian retailers, including at Melbourne Airport, and sales to private citizens were growing. ''They're everywhere,'' Ms MacTavish said.