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Diminutive Device to Detect Drones Hovering Overhead


Monroe

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Well a true end of an era ... the cowboys and shepherds maybe now out of a job.

Drones controlled by computer will be able to track and round up sheep and cows. Also look at that picture of a "drone pack horse" in this article ... I thought drones only flew but they are still considered a "drone" if they walk and not fly? It's getting interesting ... we can all have "drone horses" one day, no need for hay or oats to feed them ... just a good charge of the batteries at night while they're in the barn.

Drone controlled by computer will be able to track and round up sheep and cows

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2331146/Baa-baa-robot-Drone-controlled-able-track-round-sheep-cows.html

The bond between shepherds and their loyal sheepdogs is a rural image portrayed on television shows like the BBC's One Man His Dog.

But now the face of hill farming may soon change forever with the introduction of a battery-powered airborne robot to track and round up flocks.

The drone, developed by Frenchman Marc-Alexandre Favier, costs a few hundred pounds and could eventually be controlled by smartphone.

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Edited by duffy98
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But now the face of hill farming may soon change forever with the introduction of a battery-powered airborne robot to track and round up flocks.

The drone, developed by Frenchman Marc-Alexandre Favier, costs a few hundred pounds and could eventually be controlled by smartphone.

Well, to be fair this (BTW nice :thumbup ) is nothing more than a POC, a modded commercial quadricopter with some soft that can recognize a single (big) red spot on white piece of paper in a gym.

If you have ever seen how white (please read as "any possible shade of gray or light brown) is a real sheep and how "pastel" are colours used to mark them, you would doubt on it's effectiveness, possibly in the mist, fog or rain for which Scotland is reknown in the world.

And BTW the whole point is about just monitoring and locating, the rounding up is still a chore of the shepherd (with a quad).

Babe would still score better ;):

And dogs can do Extreme Shepherding :lol: :

jaclaz

Edited by jaclaz
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Yeah ... thanks for reminding me about Babe ... great movie, own the DVD, brought a tear to my eye. I actually am now more interested in a "drone horse". For years I wanted a reason to go out and buy a western hat ... now I have one, I can see myself one day (if I live long enough) with my ranch and a herd of 50 or 100 drone horses. No need for a vet and shots anymore, just a simple toolbox to fix things or repair a "broken leg" ... take the old one off, throw it away and put a new leg right back on ... maybe one or two hours work. Drone race horses, if they suffer a broken leg, put a new leg on and they can be in the next race! The possibilities are endless, I could get a drone mule and go look for gold out in Arizona ... maybe find the "Lost Dutchman Mine".

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Edited by duffy98
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Back to topic, meet the Robobee:

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2013/05/robotic-insects-make-first-controlled-flight/

....

The prototypes are still tethered by a very thin power cable because there are no off-the-shelf solutions for energy storage that are small enough to be mounted on the robot’s body. High-energy-density fuel cells must be developed before the RoboBees will be able to fly with much independence.

Control, too, is still wired in from a separate computer, though a team led by SEAS faculty Gu-Yeon Wei and David Brooks is working on a computationally efficient brain that can be mounted on the robot’s frame.

.....

The video doesn't display for me, however:

http://robobees.seas.harvard.edu/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RoboBee

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/video/2013/may/03/robobee-insect-flight-demonstration-video

jaclaz

Edited by jaclaz
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I fear you are getting forgetful, jaclaz... :ph34r:

duffy98 had already posted about the RoboBees...

However, this article has since come out since I posted earlier today ... not as real looking as the mosquito drone but they are "flying".

Flight of the RoboBee

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2013/0502/Flight-of-the-RoboBee-Tiny-hovering-robot-creates-buzz

May 02, 2013

The successful controlled flight of the tiny RoboBee designed by a team at Harvard represents a key step in the development of insect-size drones with a range of potential uses.

A robotic fly with a body not much taller than a penny standing on edge has taken to the air, passing its tests with flying colors. The Robobee, as it's called, is the smallest artificial insect yet flown, according to the team that built it.

...

and I had followed that post with this one...

Wow! RoboBee, indeed... It exists, weighs about 80 mg, takes off and flies controlledly (for a time) then crash-lands, at present. However, it's still tethered because power source and computer-flight-control are not onboard. It weighs 80 mg! The reference is: Ma et al., Controlled Flight of a Biologically Inspired, Insect-Scale Robot, Science 340, 603-607 (3 May 2013); DOI: 10.1126/science.1231806

Those RoboBees are really a big jump forward (or a miniature flight upwards, maybe)... but I wonder why nobody seems to be pursuing the sole long duration power source viable for such a nano-bot:

... a stasis-field trapped Kamehameha (viz. かめはめ波) orb...

:unsure:

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My bad :blushing: , I meant "back to topic" in the sense of "back to topic" and "meet the robobee" in the sense of "meet the robobee in action".

The idea was to to provide the link to the videos, that show one of the little thingies attempting different maneuvers (seemingly landing has still to be worked upon ;)).

jaclaz

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All is well ... I also could not play the video but I liked the one link that had the drawing picture of the drone insect parts ... pretty neat. I actually forgot myself that I had already mentioned the RoboBees, there has just been so many posts about different types of drones.

If you jaclaz, dencorso or anyone comes across some future information on drones, please post what ever you find. This is all fairly new with these newer type drones, even though, as was posted earlier, they sort of go back to the World War 2 or before time frame. However, most people today seem not to know much about them or how they are developing to a smaller size. Sort of a new threshold starting in 2012 / 2013 but probably in 10 to 20 years it will all be common with everyday life. New laws will have to be written to cover who knows what as time passes and as more drones are developed. For instance, if a person looks into a neighbor's window being a "peeping tom" in 2013, there are laws for that and that person will probably be arrested ... but what if the same neighbor flies a small spy drone over the neighbor's property with a single woman or a daughter sunbathing. Is there a law on the books for that in 2013 ... I don't know? It just seems like there has to be some major discussion on drones at some point and what laws need to be amended or what new laws to be added. Not many of these drones are actually a problem now since they still seem to be mostly in the development stage but 5 to 10/20 years things should change. Just my thoughts ... I don't even remember reading much about drones in 2012 but only five months into 2013 look at all the articles on drones and I probably have missed several ... as I missed the PBS Nova special on Drones earlier in 2013.

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While insect-sized drones will remain sci-fi until someone finds a solution for powering them (from an ob-board source) for long enough for them to be actually useful, cat/bunny sized robots are probably just around the corner in the future, and man sized robots are already feasible right now, although super-ultra-expensive and not very bright, nowadays... but I'd say they may become commercially available in 10 years or maybe even less, even if still quite expensive. There were some news about a "big dog" pack-animal robot being already in tests for usability by the US Army, IIRR.

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Ok jaclaz ... I got the video to work, had to put Proxomitron on Bypass. I don't often have to do that so sometimes I forget to check with it off.

dencorso: There were some news about a "big dog" pack-animal robot being already in tests for usability by the US Army, IIRR.

From what I am reading ... the drone pack horse, mule and dog are all one in the same. I could be wrong.

DARPA shows off Big Dog ground drone to USMC Commandant

http://defensetech.org/2012/09/10/darpa-shows-off-big-dog-ground-drone-to-usmc-commandant/

DARPA 4 Legged Robotic Horse

http://www.google.com/search?q=DARPA+4+Legged+Robotic+Horse&num=100&safe=off&sa=G&complete=0&hl=en&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&ei=4TamUeWHJJfl4AOXxYGQBA&ved=0CDoQsAQ&biw=1020&bih=627&sei=6jamUdWWG5HE4APNmICYAw&gbv=1

It's a little scary ...

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Edited by duffy98
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From what I am reading ... the drone pack horse, mule and dog are all one in the same.

Yes, you've got that right! It's now officially called Legged Squad Support System (LS3), it seems, but BigDog is the catchy name that'll remain, IMO. It has enough in common with horses and mules, of course. including the intende use (a robotic pack-animal), but many of its moves are more similar to dog moves than to horse/mule moves, AFICS... and probably that's why DARPA's people dubbed it BigDog to start with.

In the US, as here in Brazil, apartment buildings without elevators are next to non-existant. However, that's not so in Europe, where they are common in the most expensive neighborhoods, even in London, Paris and Milan. So what I do envisage as the probable 1st civillian use of a BigDog would be to be bought by such condominia, to bring up the stairs things, like, say, the packages with the goods just bought from the local supermarket.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Here we go ... I wonder if a person could just shoot the thing down with a shotgun but probably not. I can see a small fortune for anyone inventing "small drone killer missiles" that you can fire from your back yard ... like the little model rockets that I used to build and fly a few hundred feet into the air and then would drop back to earth with a little parachute ... except these little rockets would be on a "one time" mission!

Guy Refuses to Stop Drone-Spying on Seattle Woman

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/05/so-this-is-how-it-begins-guy-refuses-to-stop-drone-spying-on-seattle-woman/275769/

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Edited by duffy98
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Here we go ... I wonder if a person could just shoot the thing down with a shotgun but probably not. I can see a small fortune for anyone inventing "small drone killer missiles" that you can fire from your back yard ... like the little model rockets that I used to build and fly a few hundred feet into the air and then would drop back to earth with a little parachute ... except these little rockets would be on a "one time" mission!

Guy Refuses to Stop Drone-Spying on Seattle Woman

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/05/so-this-is-how-it-begins-guy-refuses-to-stop-drone-spying-on-seattle-woman/275769/

...

NIce article. :thumbup

THREE things are IMHO evident:

  1. contrary to the intitial thought, there is actually a need (or at least a market) for a drone buzz detecting device :unsure: :
    This afternoon, a stranger set an aerial drone into flight over my yard and beside my house near Miller Playfield. I initially mistook its noisy buzzing for a weed-whacker on this warm spring day. After several minutes, I looked out my third-story window to see a drone hovering a few feet away.
  2. Mr. John Villasenor is definitely a lawyer :yes: :
    The First Amendment provides a right to gather information, but that right is not unbounded; it ends, Villasenor writes, "when it crosses into an invasion of privacy." He continued, "Putting a stepladder up against someone else's home without permission, climbing up the ladder, and then photographing into a second-floor window would be an invasion of privacy. Using a drone just outside the window to obtain those same photographs would be just as much an invasion of privacy."
    Now I would guess that if someone is "putting a stepladder up against my home without permission, climbing up the ladder, and then photographing" the public street, I have all the rights in the world to kick him/her out of my property. (right idea, wrong example)
  3. strangely enough the nice paper by Mr. Villasenor comments on Arizona's, California's and Oregon's :w00t: trespassing Law provisions but fails to cite Texas and other southern states :whistle: :
    1911-m1911-9-1-1-self-defense-demotivational-posters-1333224250.jpg

This latter point makes me think that maybe there could be a new, emerging (niche) market for Automated Air Defense For Backyards (AADFB).

Basically you assemble together the "Drone Shield" with this ;):

airman-lego-minigun-person-with-hat-demotivational-posters-1306709031.jpg

jaclaz

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Great pictures and the one of the Automated Air Defense guy, hilarious ... they could be positioned on the roof, maybe in a few trees ... four of those little guys on the corners of a roof could probably keep the area clear! I once thought it was a crazy thing for people to be living in caves that were made into nice living areas but not anymore.

After I posted earlier I was thinking of something maybe better than little drone killer missiles would be a "backyard laser weapon" ... so we would have a choice ... Launch the Little Killer Rockets" or "Fire up the Laser".

... but as I said in some older posts, laws are going to have to be updated or new laws written for all this drone stuff ... how about the first time a government or private drone drops out of the sky and crashes into someone's house?

...

Edited by duffy98
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.... how about the first time a government or private drone drops out of the sky and crashes into someone's house?

That's why they are making 'em smaller and insect like :yes: , the damages in case of collision will be neglectable ;).

jaclaz

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