"Drone Wars - Quadrotor video" Topic

YouTube link

I had a total geek out when I saw the video.

As a discussion point would a drone army be viable without the traditional termantor style AI baddies?

Thanks

I'm seriously considering one in 28mm. Between RAFM, Infinity, GZG and others, there's plenty of non-human drones out there.

Old news (yes, I know the video just came out, but it has been circulating around the school labs for the last year in review).

Have you seen the quad rotors playing tennis, juggling, or playing the piano (or flying using just an off-the-shelf kinect)?

YouTube link

BTW, this is one of the reasons why I keep going on about how soldiers will be replaced by drones and robots soon.

And this isn't even cybernetics. This is just basic off-the-shelf low-tech robotics.

The state-of-the-art at places like Boston Dynamics, or the Robotic Motion Labs at CMU, or Ron Arkin's lab (and company) at Georgia Tech have stuff that is just SICK!

Best quote from YouTube Comments:

"God, its like these people WANT skynet to win."

Except, of course, the fact that you can do this in no other place on earth than the lab in which it is set up. The lab setup is key to it working. The room is purpose-built with special lighting and cameras to determine the location of each drone (how they stay in synch). It is unclear how much of the computing needed is offloaded from the drones as well. But the drones don't have onboard sensors helping them stay in formation.

You could do it in another room – once you've moved all the sensors, computers, lighting needed to replicate the effect. Not ready for prime time yet and a bit like Uri Geller bending spoons.

They have a system of larger drones that can do this with Kinect systems.

The hardware and software are scale-able to smaller systems as features in IC get smaller.

I'm with Xintao!

This doesn't bode well for personal privacy, but shotgun ammo sales will skyrocket.

You do realize that these are cheap enough for private citizens to buy or build.