“Derek Klingenberg—a farmer in Kansas, according to Popular Mechanics—pulled a bluegill out of his pond by baiting a fishing line attached to a DJI Phantom 2 quadcopter, Popular Science reported. Klingenberg told Popular Science that he used a fake worm as bait, and it took about 10 minutes of drone fishing to catch the fish.”
Britain’s battleship of the future: torpedoes that travel at almost 350 mph, an electromagnetic rail gun, drones made on board and a holographic control room.
New article on how tech can help achieve free education while also shrinking the prison system:
Micro drones, robot guards, and tracking chips will turn convicts into tax-paying, law-abiding citizens.
Drones are everywhere these days. They’re at your local park, they’re in the ocean, they’re hovering over the White House lawn, and they may even be hovering overhead armed with tear gas.
In a world that’s becoming increasingly drone friendly, there are some serious safety considerations that shouldn’t be ignored.
Specifically, government and military officials have cautioned that drones might soon be outfitted with explosives or chemical weapons and flown into either public or sensitive spaces.
With that in mind, Boeing recently developed a portable laser cannon that can eviscerate unwanted and pesky drones mid-flight. In the future, these types of lasers might be installed in all sorts of locations, including airports and sensitive military installations.
Long time ago I was wondering why not to use drones (*) (named for that concrete application Extreme Access Flyers) to explore the space, to reach new planets, asteroids … it would be exciting … rovers are limited in action, so what if we make it airborne? Once in space, why not to send a drone or a swarm of them from the main spaceship to explore a new planet? They could interact, share capabilities, morph, etc.
While the economy looks more or less promising for civil and military, there is still a long path to walk …
“Teal Group’s 2015 market study estimates that UAV production will soar from current worldwide UAV production of $4 billion annually to $14 billion, totaling $93 billion in the next ten years. Military UAV research spending would add another $30 billion over the decade.”
Read more at http://www.suasnews.com/2015/08/37903/teal-group-predicts-worldwide-uav-production-will-total-93-billion-in-its-2015-uav-market-profile-and-forecast/
Now NASA pursues the aim of using drones to overcome the problems of rovers …
Read more at http://www.engadget.com/2015/07/31/space-drones-mars-moon-asteroid/
http://www.nasa.gov/feature/extreme-access-flyer-to-take-planetary-exploration-airborne/
(*) Using the word drone as it is more commonly used in society.
Ad Astra!
How 3D printing is changing the way we manufacture and produce is already a fact, step by step, in different areas, from aerospace to the medical areas.
How will this impact the established processes, the economy, the patient …
Is this the dawn of personalized medicine? patients will be able to print their own pills at home? Will 3D printing represent an enhancement to distribution processes?
Exciting but at the same time other questions are if following a cheap driver is really safe…
“Would the FDA be able to oversee personal pill printing? Should they? If an automated pill printer goes out of whack and misprints medication, would the blame fall on the machine’s manufacturers or the operators (i.e., the patients)? What if the machines were hacked? If people can reverse engineer patented drugs through 3D printing, how can those patents be protected? Will it be a detriment to drug development?
will people be able to hijack pill printers to manufacture illicit drugs?” This is the same situation we have now with RPAS/UAS (Remote Piloted Aircrafts/Unmanned Aircraft Systems) and cyberthreats ..
Read more at http://singularityhub.com/2015/08/14/first-3d-printed-drug-ushers-in-era-of-downloadable-medicine/
AI-controlled armed, autonomous UAVs may take over when things start to happen faster than human thought in future wars. From Call of Duty Black Ops 2 (credit: Activision Publishing)
The open letter from the Future of Life Institute (FLI) calling for a “ban on offensive autonomous weapons” is as unrealistic as the broad relinquishment of nuclear weapons would have been at the height of the cold war.
A treaty or international agreement banning the development of artificially intelligent robotic drones for military use would not be effective. It would be impossible to completely stop nations from secretly working on these technologies out of fear that other nations and non-state entities are doing the same.
It’s also not rational to assume that terrorists or a mentally ill lone wolf attacker would respect such an agreement.
This week, the US Patent and Trademark Office approved an application from Boeing for an autonomous drone that can be recharged without ever landing.
More than 1,000 leading artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics researchers and others, including Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk, just signed and published an open letter from the Future of Life Institute (FLI) today calling for a ban on offensive autonomous weapons.
FLI defines “autonomous weapons” as those that select and engage targets without human intervention, such as armed quadcopters that can search for and eliminate people meeting certain pre-defined criteria, but do not include cruise missiles or remotely piloted drones for which humans make all targeting decisions.
