Lifeboat Foundation

When The Verge began covering “drones” three years ago, we got a lot of grief about using that word: drone. These were just remote control toys, they couldn’t fly themselves! When drones got smart enough to navigate using GPS, and to follow people around, the naysayers pointed out they still couldn’t see anything. It could follow you, sure, but not while avoiding trees. At CES the last two years we finally saw drones that could sense and avoid real-world obstacles. But those were just tech demos, R&D projects which so far haven’t been made commercially available.

That all changes today with the introduction of DJI’s new drone, the Phantom 4. It’s the first consumer unit that can see the world around it and adjust accordingly, the next big step towards a truly autonomous aircraft. Try and drive it into a wall, the Phantom 4 will put on the brakes. If you ask it to fly from your position to a spot across a river, and there is a bridge in between, it will make a judgement call: increase speed to clear the obstacle or, if that isn’t possible, stop and hover in place, awaiting your next command.

The Phantom 4 accomplishes this feat with the help of five cameras: two on the front and two on the bottom, plus the main 4K camera that has always been onboard to capture video. The images captured by these cameras are run through computer vision software which constructs a 3D model of the world around it that the drone can intelligently navigate.

Continue reading “DJI’s revolutionary Phantom 4 drone can dodge obstacles and track humans” »

https://youtube.com/watch?v=0gYkZGOTdM0

With the first round of the Drone Racing League’s Level 1 race finished, eight pilots will compete for a spot in the finals.

BMI’s (according to DARPA and David Axe) could begin as early as 2017 on humans. The plan is to use stentrodes. Testing has already proven success on sheep. I personally have concerns in both a health (as the article highlighted prone to blood clots) as well as anything connecting via Wi-Fi or the net with hackers trying to challenge themselves to prove anything is hackable; that before this goes live on a person we make sure that we have a more secure hack-resistant net before someone is injured or in case could injure someone else.

Soldiers could control drones with a thought.

On Monday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Mark Zuckerberg partook in what he thought would be a “fireside chat” with Wired’s Jessi Hempel but which was verifiably not fireside, and was, actually, a keynote.

Inverse picked out the best nine moments of this interview.

1.) Zuck doesn’t know that Aquila will meet regulations but is just confident that it’ll work out

Continue reading “Mark Zuckerberg Offers These Predictions for the Future of the Internet” »

Membrane wings show promise for highly efficient micro air vehicles.

The advent of 5G is likely to bring another splurge of investment, just as orders for 4G equipment are peaking. The goal is to be able to offer users no less than the “perception of infinite capacity”, says Rahim Tafazolli, director of the 5G Innovation Centre at the University of Surrey. Rare will be the device that is not wirelessly connected, from self-driving cars and drones to the sensors, industrial machines and household appliances that together constitute the “internet of things” (IoT).

It is easy to dismiss all this as “a lot of hype”, in the words of Kester Mann of CCS Insight, a research firm. When it comes to 5G, much is still up in the air: not only which band of radio spectrum and which wireless technologies will be used, but what standards makers of network gear and handsets will have to comply with. Telecoms firms have reached consensus only on a set of rough “requirements”. The most important are connection speeds of up to 10 gigabits per second and response times (“latency”) of below 1 millisecond (see chart).

Read more

Personally, I am not a Breitbart fan; however, I am publishing this article to highlight something that I noticed. In this article it highlighted the 3 Rules of Robotics which are old and need to be updated. One of the rules is “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.” is not true. Why? Because as long as criminals who have enough money and can pay others well to re-engineer/ re-program robotics; robotics can become dangerous to humans. The drones today are good examples of how stalkers are using them, drug cartels, etc.

Robotics, once the almost exclusive purview of science fiction, is now approaching a point at which it will be capable of dramatic influence over humanity. These advancements are as much a lesson in caution as in the wonder of the human imagination.

Read more

This article is amusing on killer robots and how governments should address the threat of killer robots on a national level. On a national level if (in my case the US) we were invaded or a whole army of robots landed on the shores of Florida, NY, or CA; then yes Congress would need to approve war, etc. Which is what this article highlights. However, attacking robots will most likely not be the result of an invasion from another country; attacking robot/s will be the result of criminals; etc. that hacked/or reprogrammed the robotics.

Cartels, terrorists, etc. will pay well to have self driving cars, humanoid robots, etc. re-engineered and re-programmed for their own benefits and become a weapon against individuals and the population.

The United Nations’ effort to ban killer robots will fail, but there are three important steps the United States can take to help slow the rise of lethal autonomous weapons systems, one of the most prominent voices in the robotics debate said this week.

Continue reading “Three Steps the U.S. Can Take to Stop Killer Robots” »

There is a need for a larger “official and governmental” review and oversight board for drones, robots, etc. due to the criminal elements; however, any review needs focus more on the immediate criminal elements that can use and is using this technology plus how to best manage it. Like guns; we may see a need for background check and registration & license to have drones and certain robots as a way to better vet and track who can own a drone or robot.

At AAAI-16, a panel discussed the safety that will be necessary when it comes to autonomous manned and unmanned aircraft. Here’s what you need to know.

Read more