These robots are impressive - should we be afraid? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 13, 2018, 01:19:19 pm
content: I saw this video, and it did not sit well with me, despite how impressive the hardware is and firmware algorithms would be. It isn't April 1.Just add a gun and facial recognition and you have a lethal weapon. It would not be surprising if so-called superpowers are working on such weapons now. Communist regimes could efficiently hunt down and liquidate those who criticise them with anonymity and without risk to the assailant.

author: SL4P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 13, 2018, 01:35:09 pm
content: Quote from: VK3DRB on February 13, 2018, 01:19:19 pmWhy bother - in Australia the government has probably sold the IP to another gov4ernment anyway...!

author: Maxlor
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 13, 2018, 01:36:14 pm
content: Quote from: VK3DRB on February 13, 2018, 01:19:19 pmOr add a water bottle and med kit, and you have a rescue dog that goes where living things dare not.Oppressive regimes don't need fancy tech to "hunt down and liquidate" people. They can do that using regular old goons.

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 13, 2018, 01:38:46 pm
content: I think you might just notice...It doesn't quite look like a T-800 yet.Quote from: Maxlor on February 13, 2018, 01:36:14 pmThis wouldn't have the stigma.

author: mtdoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 13, 2018, 08:50:07 pm
content: Me thinks it is time to start developing counter measures - before it's too late!

author: MT
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 14, 2018, 03:00:40 am
content: ftp://Quote from: mtdoc on February 13, 2018, 08:50:07 pmLike what? It's to late, DARPA pays for these evil machines and Clinton/Bush/Obama already been using the drone variant to do some extraordinary killings, an act always under some fancy reinvented label... Korea have counter measures!

author: IanMacdonald
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 14, 2018, 08:56:33 am
content: Aussies aren't safe either:Didn't say if it has a monster knife attachment.

author: donotdespisethesnake
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 14, 2018, 09:06:12 am
content: Quote from: VK3DRB on February 13, 2018, 01:19:19 pmYou could do this already with a wheeled or tracked vehicle, so why is this more scary? Probably an uncanny valley effect, because it resembles a living thing but isn't.It looks like they have created rechargeable "dogs", the Army rejected previous versions because the petrol engine was way too loud. We're already well on the road to battlefield robots, it's inevitable that the technology will also be used against civilians. Robocop is not a warning against a dystopian future, it's a roadmap. Sadly, the people who expect a utopian future with AI will be sorely disappointed.

author: BravoV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 14, 2018, 09:39:55 am
content: Mount this on any automated moving vehicle ...https://youtu.be/3ygFeywrvjc

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 14, 2018, 12:31:39 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on February 14, 2018, 09:44:03 amThe regime can distribute identity data and instructions to a plethora of robotic policemen. These robots could work as a team 24/7 and never tire until their mission has been accomplished. They will do it much more quickly, efficiently and clinically than using human assassins. With such technology, Putin could rub out his journalist enemies without the risk to his comrades using polonium.But there might be a positive. Russia and the US can target enemies with pinpoint precision, rather than having their "war heroes" bomb hospitals full of innocent civilians, or firing missiles into bunkers full of innocent women and children.

author: BravoV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 14, 2018, 12:39:54 pm
content: Quote from: VK3DRB on February 14, 2018, 12:31:39 pmYou've been brainwashed too deep and readingcrappropaganda too much ...Quoting ...."Just because one Islamic State  was on our house, the aircraft bombed us," ..."The massive explosion that tore through Baghdad Street last week killed nine of Jasim's relatives, including son Firas, 7, and daughter Taiba, 4. "We recovered half his body," she said of the 7-year-old. "The rest is still there." ...Just one source from simple googling ->Fun Bombing... out of tons of other reliable sources like this incidents (plural) you can google out.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 14, 2018, 02:27:55 pm
content: If you are afraid of this, then don't watch the Metalhead episode from Black Mirror. In fact, don't watch Black Mirror at all.You shouldn't be afraid of the tools. You should be afraid from the people who have the tools.

author: daqq
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 14, 2018, 02:55:30 pm
content: QuoteWell, drones are already used in war. Basically, this is just some icing on the deadly cake.QuoteA bit of a problem with sales there, see:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_on_Blinding_Laser_Weapons

author: dmills
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 14, 2018, 05:00:44 pm
content: It is not so much the state of the art stuff that is likely to be a problem, as the fact that the barriers to entry for some classes of weapons are so low that non state level actors can play, it may yet be that letting the drone as weapon out of the bag turns out to be a very double edged sword for the western powers).The problem is that we have reached the point that what used to be advanced military tech is now very much COTS and that means that it is not state level actors you have to be concerned with unless you are playing against them, drone technology is **FAR** more of an enabler for terrorists and insurgents then it is for a conventional military (For whom it merely makes cheaper an attack capability they already had).An improvised semi autonomous airframe with ten miles or so of range and maybe a kg or so of payload reliant on GPS is clearly pretty much a competent hobbyist with moderate disposable income sort of project, and one adding an inertial platform or even terrain following is not out of reach for a small team.Sure you can hit them with patriot at $1M a throw or some sort of MANPAD at $50k a time, but when the thing you are shooting down is a few hundred dollars worth of used chainsaw engine and foamboard with a guidance and piloting package from sparkfun or even running on an old mobile phone (Simplest airframe I could come up with at a few seconds thought) the economics and logistics will become gnarly fast.That is the drone to worry about, not the Boston things that are freaky, but expensive.Regards, Dan.

author: calexanian
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 14, 2018, 05:10:24 pm
content: Digging bunker. Stocking it will liquor and canned food.Hahahahaha. Let me know when Mr. Data gets here.

author: RoGeorge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 14, 2018, 05:26:35 pm
content: These robots are impressive - should we be afraid?Yes, but not because of the robots, but because of us, humans.Then, should we start piling canned food, dig underground bunkers, and prepare ourselves for the end of the world?No, but the world we know will end anyway, in the sense that our world will be long gone by the time of our grand grandchild, the same as our grand grandparent's world ended long time ago.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 14, 2018, 05:35:45 pm
content: Quote from: VK3DRB on February 13, 2018, 01:19:19 pmWhat makes you think they can't do that now? Drones have nearly limitless range and can fly overhead and kill you any time you want. People in some areas of the world have to live with this reality every day. With a bit of luck the people hit are labelled terrorists and everyone's glad they're dead, but in most cases nobody cares.Of course, there are more subtle ways to target someone and make his life impossible. It's not a matter of not being capable of doing so, but it not being worth the hassle of doing it.

author: donotdespisethesnake
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 14, 2018, 06:06:42 pm
content: How soon will we go from(skip to 5:32)to

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 14, 2018, 06:41:12 pm
content: Quote from: calexanian on February 14, 2018, 05:10:24 pmSwitzerland has been already doing this.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 15, 2018, 05:24:33 am
content: It isn't time to panic yet. The solution for this robot is to click the door to the locked position and then wait the fifteen or twenty minutes for its battery to run down. Seems within the reach of a lot of people.Next stage of defense is a loop snare. Then deadfalls and other similar traps.We have been down this road before, and the technology still has to catch up with a millenia or two of defensive technology.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 15, 2018, 05:39:07 am
content: Quote from: blueskull on February 14, 2018, 06:14:41 pmThis protocol resulted from (among other things) the purported use of blinding weapons by the Chinese during their brief war with Vietnam and limited production in the late 1980s early 1990s of the ZM-87 blinding weapon.The technology to do this has been around for a very long time. What is interesting is that, unlike poison gas and other weapons the ban did not require tens of thousands of human victims to trigger a legal ban. Either we are evolving as a species or we find loss of sight more abhorrent than loss of lungs, limbs or life.

author: RoGeorge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 15, 2018, 08:32:37 am
content: Seems like the propaganda completely washed out any meaning of the word "terrorist". Pretty much any human been thatmightfight back is nowadays called a terrorist.The fact that people saw a robot, then one page later we end up talking about terrorists shows nothing more than how brainwashed we are, and how successful the propaganda machine is. It reminds me of the first two decades of my life, under the Ceausescu's communist regime. Here, in Romania, he did the same fear based propaganda, except that the "terrorists" back then were the "decadent capitalists". Capitalism was the escape goat for everything. Every person that was disagreeing with the glorious communism and socialism dogma, or with the regime leaders, was labeled as a capitalist traitor, then annihilated. The same "for your protection" was shoveled on our throats when our rights were severely limited, like for example the interdiction to travel and visit western country was just to protect us from the decadence of the capitalism, of course. Banning travel was not enough, in time they start banning western movies, banning western music, banning pretty much everything and everybody that was not in line with the propaganda. It wasn't funny.Thirty years later, and now I see other regimes all over the world banning materials, chemicals, even banning words or knowledge, all in the name of protecting people.We have such a short memory that we look like we will never learn anything from our past, let aside from our history.Meh, that sounds pretty sad. The word "terrorist" triggered me, and the rainy day from outside did the rest, I guess. I see that word everywhere, in media, in movies, in games, in day to day people's talk.I'm an optimist, I know Humanity will be good, and usually we do better and better (with small exceptions like the Dark Ages), but man, I'm so seek of all this nowadays propaganda.

author: vk6zgo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 15, 2018, 10:46:20 am
content: Quote from: mtdoc on February 13, 2018, 08:50:07 pmIf they want to use it in the field, the obvious ones are tripwires or landmines, or both combined.If they are going to try it in a town, just run over it with a car.

author: donotdespisethesnake
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 15, 2018, 11:08:06 am
content: Sarah Connor, hope you're getting some good tips hereGeorge Orwell's 1984 outlined how the state must always have an "enemy" to be "at war with", to legitimise their authority and suppress dissent. Of course, in past times there often was a realistic threat, so the Roman emperor could say "we need to enact these harsh measures to counter the threat Visigoth/Vandals/Gauls"As times generally became more peaceful, external threats must be invented, or perhaps even created depending on who you believe. Propaganda, fake news, oppression and self serving leaders are not new, and never likely to go away, but we find new technology to apply to their continuation.Just recently reading how ISIS trained terrorists can turn cheap drones bought off Amazon into flying bombs. Is that real or scare headlines? It doesn't matter, it generates page views and justifies introducing check points. Papieren bitte!

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 15, 2018, 12:45:25 pm
content: Quote from: BravoV on February 14, 2018, 12:39:54 pmYeah. Kunduz hospital, staffed by MSF volunteers. The Amiriyah bunker bombing. Guantanamo Bay. My Lai. Not propaganda. The only crap is what the military jerks or cowards in chain of command use to try to cover up their war crimes. If those behind these crimes can sleep at night, they are psychopaths. With shoot-to-kill robots, there are engineers around who would happily work on developing such machines. Hence it is not a matter of if, it is a matter of when. As with the rogue nations who continue to stockpile nuclear weapons, we are powerless to stop them.http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058083/

author: rollatorwieltje
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 15, 2018, 01:00:46 pm
content: Quote from: donotdespisethesnake on February 14, 2018, 06:06:42 pmNot very soon I suspect.https://twitter.com/bilalfarooqui/status/887025375754166272/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

author: CopperCone
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 15, 2018, 05:03:53 pm
content: The better question is when are we going to get EMP rifles like in system shock 2.We need a way to make great magnetic fields... Or crazy thermal weapons.. Work on really good batteries please...Something like a one shot super plasma cutter would work in close quarters, if you could get a 15 foot wide plasma stream from itI imagine if its mobile enough it could be used to hunt down hidden shooters in urban areas. In most cases i would think finding a target with a drone and then blowing up the room he is in with a rocket would be cheaper and easier to implement. I have seen soldiers on youtube using drones tactically, for instance i saw a marine squad fighting a shooter behind a fense, and the drone operator basically told him where to aim his grenade throw without risking exposure.It can also carry heavier weapons then a drone and be designed to creep up on an enemy position and be sent in for close quarter combat during something like a rolling barrage artillery attack... If moderate armor is used it can follow artillery very close and be used to storm trenches in all the dust kicked up by explosions... Possibly gaining entry to a positon covered by a significant air defense grid where attack helicopters have trouble getting in range. Its hard to imagine this situation occuring with the heavy emphasis modern militaries place on air power however

author: phliar
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 15, 2018, 05:17:49 pm
content: I hope it didn't take these robots to make you think that technology might be harmful to humans or society.Technology has always had the potential to be dangerous, and there are many cases where millions have been killed using technology. It is up to us, as a society, to not use tech for evil purposes. And it is up to us, the technologists, to think of these issues while we're developing the tech, so we can provide useful expert opinion to our society.This is why technical/scientific education must have a strong ethics component. (But I have never heard of ethics training for tech people. Sigh....)

author: mtdoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 15, 2018, 05:18:54 pm
content: The history of war making and technology shows that with each introduction of new technology which allows further distance between humans, more indiscriminate killing occurs. From swords and spears to rifles to artillery to long range artillery to rockets to planes dropping bombs to long range missiles to drones, etc,etc. Patrolling, policing and ultimately killing robots would just be another step along that path. Much easier to kill "civilians" when you don't have to look them in the eye.Quote from: blueskull on February 14, 2018, 09:44:03 amCurrently happening in the USA and other western "democracies" as well. Perhaps just not as obvious to the masses as it is in China.The thing with these robot dogs, etc - is that once they are employed by police and the military, they will be able to be used for house to house searches to root out any suspected "terrorists" or other "subversives". That's a job no human wants to do - too dangerous and humans are too likely to be distracted by the crying children or screaming spouse.Who knows what algorithms might be employed: "Detection: high tech electronic equipment. Directive: apprehend suspect by any means necessary"

author: CopperCone
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 15, 2018, 05:48:49 pm
content: I can imagine that a heavily prepared position could be easier taken witthout heavy support using drone dogs though, i saw a battle on youtube in the early stages of the iraq war where there was a sniper in a rather long building. If the walls between rooms with windows were demolished and the interior of the building was prepared with nettingand mesh, a relocating sniper would be difficult to kill. I believe in the video i saw the resistance was so heavy that the soldiers shot a few rockets at it and then had to wait for a abrams tank to show up and basically level the front of the building. This took a long while and heavy equipment. I could imagine that some of these robotic dogs could be carried by a humvee or jeep and be used to allow enough commotion inside of the structure to allow a light mobile force to make a more rapid advancement into the area without relying on something logistics heavy like a main battle tank. Also the strucure might not have to be as leveled, allowing civilians to take refuge there later.They could also perform a breach attack using a demolition charge to breach the strucuture then still be able to manuver through the rubble unlike a tracked or wheeled drone. Especially if there is battle damage already present. I can imagine absolute destruction if a heavy caliber machine gun was mounted on itEven one of those big gasoline power loud ones could be used to make a temporary cover or be used to funnel the enemy into a kill zone.. Being armored and manuverable and capable of shooting right through most battlefield obstructions would probobly be pretty lethal.Dident ray bradburys fahrenheit 451 have a robodog in it?

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 16, 2018, 01:37:22 pm
content: There is Land of Fools somewhere, that has a foolish president representing a foolish population. Shoot-to-kill robots are their least problem. Their biggest danger is themselves. Being fools in the Land of Fools, they ask the same questions over and over, "Why?"

author: mtdoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2018, 02:02:02 am
content: The guy with the hockey stick is back....Looks like they've made some improvements since they attacked one of their humanoid robots with a hockey stick a while back.I like the integrated leash. Would be fun to take one of these doggies for walk..

author: jonovid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2018, 02:36:12 am
content: Quote from: mtdoc on February 22, 2018, 02:02:02 amyes some improvements the foot/heel has had some phalanges re-design. stirrup over the 2017 ball foot design.if Boston Dynamics added a femur top limb link giving the leg 3 parts not 2 as most animal limbs have up to 4 parts per leg. improve robotic limberness?Proof of concept this type of robots is a demonstration of house cleaning or emergency rescue.in a randomly changing environment.