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Tag: drones

  • Amazon to Use Drones for Delivery

    Amazon to Use Drones for Delivery

    The question of if drone use is ethical has been a hot topic this year. Although they have initially been deployed to fire missiles across seas, Amazon wishes to use them in a more peaceful manner– to get items to a purchaser fast.

    How fast?

    The founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, recently told 60 Minutes that more than 80% of ordered packages can be delivered by drones, and that these packages could reach us at an average time of 30 minutes.

    The drones Amazon will use are mini-drones called “octocopters.” The octocopters are estimated to being able to hold up to five pounds, and are powered by electric motors. These motors can power the drones up to a 10-mile radius from their home base centers, which means that they can cover most urban areas.

    While the reviews are somewhat mixed so far,

    It’ll be a while before we actually see winged packages in our skies. According to amazon, it’ll take at least a year or more for the service called Prime Air to pass safety and federal tests, and the Federal Aviation Administration still hasn’t finalized their own secular rules on drones.

    An advantage to this form of delivery, beyond the speed, is that it saves on fuel costs and toxic emissions. A disadvantage of drones is a decreased workload for human delivery drivers.

    Just think, soon we might have real-life mechanical Santa Clauses flying through our neighborhoods. Are you comfortable with that or not?

    [image: Youtube]

  • Haqqani Leader Killed in U.S. Drone Strike

    The AFP reported on a U.S. drone strike that took place in Pakistan last Thursday. This particular strike was a rare happenstance: it is only the second drone strike targeted outside of Pakistan’s tribal zones.

    Previous drone strikes had targeted the frontier Bannu region and a North Waziristan tribal district in an effort to reduce the influence of Taliban leaders. Accurate casualty counts are hard to come by because of the forbidden nature of the Pakistani tribal districts: no journalists, reporters, or foreign aid workers are allowed inside.

    The drone fired a missile at a religious seminary that fell under the umbrella of the Haqqani terror network, security officials acknowledged. At least six people were killed in the attack, including a high-level Haqqani spiritual leader by the name of Maulana Ahmad Jan.

    Local police sources, speaking to the AFP about Jan, said “He was the spiritual leader and head teacher of the Haqqani network… He was receiving people who were coming to [sic] condole the death of Nasiruddin Haqqani because followers of were not able to meet any other member of Haqqani family.”

    One Haqqani source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said “The seminary served as a base for the network where militants fighting across the border came to stay and rest, as the Haqqani seminaries in the tribal areas were targeted by drones.”

    Pakistani officials responded as expected: by condemning the drone strike as “a violation of sovereignty and counterproductive to efforts to end militancy.” Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Muhammad Nawaz Sharif, insisted last month in a meeting with President Obama that he stop the drone attacks.

    Despite Sharif’s protests, the drone attacks will most likely continue, as they are considered by the U.S. to be a necessary tool in eliminating militants.

    The Haqqani terror network has long been targeted by Washington, D.C. over their Afghan insurgent attacks, including a 2011 assault on the U.S. embassy in Kabul. Various estimates place the number of “drone war” casualties between 2500 and 3700, and Amnesty International thinks the U.S. may be guilty of war crimes over the attacks.

    [Image via Facebook]

  • Navy SEALs Somalia Assault Raises Strategic Questions

    Yesterday, Navy SEAL Team Six raided an al-Shabaab HQ in Barawe, Somalia. Although none of the SEALs were killed in the assault, a series of conflicting reports about the raid’s target were released, some of which claiming the individual was captured while others were claiming he died in the firefight. The raid was aborted as a failure.

    Despite conflicting reports, the SEAL team leader decided that the fighting was too hot, and after 20 minutes of gunfire, the SEAL team swam away. Somali intelligence officials have claimed, according to CBS News, that the SEAL team was targeting the leader of the al-Shabaab Islamist faction in Somalia, Mukhtar Abu Zubeyr AKA Ahmed Godane; however, an al-Shabaab official by the name of Sheikh Abdiaziz Abu Musab said via audio message that the raid had failed in its goal.

    The strike in Somalia by Navy SEAL Team Six was a part of a coordinated response to the Nairobi Westgate Mall attacks. The failed raid was part of a two-pronged response, with the second staged in Libya just hours after SEAL Team Six pulled out. The Libyan strike was targeting an al Qaeda leader associated with the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

    The Libyan raid, unlike the Somali one, was considered a huge success. Navy SEAL teams surrounded a house in Tripoli containing Anu Abas al-Liby, the al-Qaeda leader who claimed responsibility for the Embassy bombings. Liby had previously been indicted for his role in the bombings.

    The CS Monitor noted an interesting dichotomy: until recently, the Obama administration’s primary method of fighting terror abroad was authorized drone strikes. Having conducted hundreds of drone strikes during his presidency, Obama sought to decrease their frequency. Whereas 2010 saw 117 drone strikes in Pakistan alone, this year has seen only 46 Pakistani strikes while Yemen only endured 10 strikes this year. With these recent Navy SEAL raids, is the Obama administration changing tactics in the War on Terror?

    Obama recently acknowledged the deep resentment felt by the international community with regard to U.S. drone policy: “To say a military tactic is legal, or even effective, is not to say it is wise or moral in every instance,” Obama said in a speech at the National Defense University. “For the same human progress that gives us the technology to strike half a world away also demands the discipline to constrain that power – or risk abusing it.”

    [Image via a KTN YouTube news report of the raids]

  • Battling Florida’s Mosquitoes Drones May Be Used

    Mosquitoes. Doesn’t the very word “mosquito” make you want to scratch body extremities? Efforts to control and eliminate the universally-disliked insect are reaching an unprecedented level. In the Florida Keys, considerations are being made to use drones as a means to limit the presence of mosquitoes.

    The executive director of the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District, Michael Doyle, has expressed concern about the condition of mosquitoes in the area, “If you try to get across the small islands it’s back country, it’s jungle.”

    On August 26, 2013, the company responsible for creating the drones, Condor Aerial, will conduct initial aerial tests in the Florida Keys where the Maveric drone will fly over the selected location. One drone sells for $65,000, which does not include expenses needed to operate the equipment or salaries associated with flying the aircraft. These drones are only two and a half feet long, weighing at a mere two pounds, yet those responsible for operating this equipment will have to undergo additional training in order to accommodate different skill sets. Pilot training certification will be part of the job training process demanded by inspectors. Other officials involved in the process of using the equipment to maintain these widespread pests will have to complete the necessary steps in order to gain authorization for operation from the Federal Aviation Authority.

    The CEO for Condor Aerial, Fred Culbertson, speaking about the purpose of the drones said, “They’re not going to be used for surveillance.”

    The technology behind these crafts is partially utilized through thermal cameras which will indicate the specific locations where mosquitoes lay eggs.

    Michael Doyle had this to say about the technology, “What we’re looking to see is if this technology can actually see shallow water either out in the open or under mangroves, and how much land can it cover quickly so the inspectors can get out that day.”

    Since water is a necessary component in the life cycle of any mosquito, whether through stagnant water, rain water holes in trees, open pastures subject to occasional ponds, areas with melted snow, or disregarded sewage ponds, this technique may prove invaluable.

  • Border Patrol Could Arm Predator Drones

    Border Patrol Could Arm Predator Drones

    The U.S. has been using drones to keep an eye on the border with Mexico for several years now. These drones have been doing observation only, letting officials know what is going on in vulnerable spots along the border. The purpose of the drone program is not only to catch undocumented workers sneaking into the U.S., but also to help stem the drug trafficking tide. The drones used in that program are currently benign, collecting and transmitting video and photos with specialized cameras.

    But now a newly-unearthed document from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency (CBP) reveals that the U.S. has the capability of, and could be at least considering, arming those same drones in some fashion.

    The 107-page report was obtained by the Electronic Freedom Foundation through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. It is heavily redacted, but one section dealing with the kinds of equipment those drones could carry noted that:

    “Additional payload upgrades could include expendables or non-lethal weapons designed to immobilize [targets of interest].”

    The CBP has dismissed the discovery within the report. In a statement to Fox News Latino, they said:

    “CBP has no plans to arm its unmanned aircraft systems with non-lethal weapons or weapons of any kind. CBP’s unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) support CBP’s border security mission and provide an important surveillance and reconnaissance capability for interdiction agents on the ground and on the waterways. Current UAS were designed with the ability to add new surveillance capabilities, accommodate technological developments, and ensure that our systems are equipped with the most advanced resources available.”

    The CBP has eight Predator drones patrolling the northern and southern borders of the U.S., with two more in the Caribbean. The CBP has not said specifically what kinds of of non-lethal weapons its Predator drones could support, if they were to decide to do so.

  • People Are Now Controlling Drones With Their Minds

    The drones of today are controlled via a remote control. The drones of tomorrow will be controlled via your brain.

    University of Minnesota Biomedical Engineering Professor Bin He recently unveiled his latest project – a drone that can be controlled with brain waves. The device in question is a skullcap with a variety of sensors place on the outside of it that picks up brain waves from the person wearing it. The computer translates these brainwaves into commands for the drone thus allowing the user to control movement with their mind.

    Of course, brain-controlled drones are not the end result of this experiment. He’s team hopes to use this drone as a stepping stone to noninvasive remedies for people with neurodegenerative diseases that take away their ability to speak or move.

    The University of Pittsburgh has already been researching ways to give mobility back to those who have lost all motor functions. Late last year, the university shared the story of Jan Scheuermann – a woman who suffered from a rare neurodegenerative disease that robber her of all of her motor functions. The researchers at the university implanted a cable into her brain that allowed her to control a robotic arm. It wasn’t much, but it was the first time in more than a decade that she had any kind of freedom of movement.

    Now that example is much farther along than He’s, but his solution promises to be completely noninvasive. He hopes to make it so that those suffered from neurodegenerative diseases will not have to get chips implanted into their heads, or have wires leading out of the body.

    For now, however, we can just look on in awe as a drone performs mid-air tricks using only commands being fed to it by somebody’s mind.

    If you want to know more, check out this article in the Journal of Neural Engineering.

  • Domino’s Pizza Delivery Service Takes To The Sky

    Domino’s Pizza Delivery Service Takes To The Sky

    Domino’s is pretty far out there as far as marketing goes, and that’s what makes the chain so cool. It was one of the first to really embrace online ordering, and now it’s starting to embrace alternative forms of delivery.

    NBC News reports that Domino’s and creative agency T + Biscuits recently performed a pizza delivery run via drone. The drone is dubbed the “DomiCopter” and it may one day change pizza delivery. In the test below, the drone traveled four miles in 10 minutes.

    Something like this wouldn’t fly in the U.S., but it’s legal in the UK as long as the drone is no more than 126 meters off the ground. The only legal hurdle was that the company had to get permission to fly over the land you see in the video.

    This isn’t the first time pizza has been delivered via drone as a German university students pulled the same stunt last year. Pizza isn’t the only food to be delivered via drone either as TacoCopter captured the nation’s imagination last year when a student tested the idea of delivered tacos via drones to hungry customers in the Bay Area.

    Unfortunately for all of the above, air space regulations make the wide use of drone based delivery almost impossible. Drones are still a very new technology, and the regulations in place don’t play very nice with them. It will still be a while before we look to the sky, instead of our driveway, for our next pizza delivery.

  • Drone Strikes Killed 4 Americans in Last 4 Years

    As drones have become more advanced, the American public has become more aware of the devices. The unmanned flying machines could soon be used by private companies (to deliver pizza, for example) and are already heavily used by the military and some U.S. police forces. With the proliferation of this new technology has come a new public scrutiny.

    Today, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder confirmed that at least four U.S. citizens have been killed in military drone strikes since 2009. According to an Associated Press report, the admission was made in a letter Holder sent to Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the senate judiciary committee.

    The strikes occurred in Pakistan and Yemen. One of the drone strikes was targeted to kill Anwar al-Awlaki, an American and Yemeni imam who is alleged to have been a recruiter for al-Qaeda. The three other U.S. citizens killed in drone strikes were not specifically targeted. Al-Awlaki’s son, Abdulrahman, was also killed in the attack, which occurred in Yemen in 2011. An American named Samir Khan was also killed in the drone strike that killed al-Awlaki. Another American named Jude kenan Mohammed was reportedly killed in a drone strike in Pakistan.

  • Scientists Outfit A Drone With A Claw, Because Why Not?

    Drones are not exactly frightening. The little quadcopters that we’ve seen delivering pizza and tacos are actually kind of cute as far as heartless robots go.

    Well, those cute little quadcopters have not been turned into heartless killers thanks to a simple additions by researchers at University of Pennsylvania’s GRASP Lab. They thought it would be a good idea to attach a claw onto the copter so that it can dive down and grab objects without ever slowing down. The maneuver was inspired by how eagles hunt by diving to grab prey.

    What’s terrifying about this particular robot is that it can grab objects while moving at three meters per second. If it ever becomes big enough, it could pick you up off the ground before you even realize you’ve been captured by the robotic equivalent of a pterodactyl.

    [h/t: NewScientist]

  • Underwater Military Drones to be Developed by the U.S.

    The Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the wing of the U.S. Department of Defense that develops future military technology, has announced plans to place unmanned military pods at the bottom of the ocean.

    The idea is to use hide unmanned “risers” in deep-sea capsules for years before they will be needed. Once activated, the hibernating systems will rise (or “fall upward” as agency terminology puts it) to fill gaps in U.S. Military ocean oversight and “deliver action at a distance.”

    “The goal is to support the Navy with distributed technologies anywhere, anytime over large maritime areas,” said Andy Coon, DARPA program manager. “If we can do this rapidly, we can get close to the areas we need to affect, or become widely distributed without delay. To make this work, we need to address technical challenges like extended survival of nodes under extreme ocean pressure, communications to wake-up the nodes after years of sleep, and efficient launch of payloads to the surface.”

    DARPA is currently seeking design proposals for the “risers,” the payloads they will contain, and the communications technology to them. The agency is hoping to work with deep-ocean engineering communities to develop the technology. It is looking for experts in unmanned platforms, distributed sensors, networking, sensor packaging, information operations, electronic warfare, and anti-submarine warfare.

    According to DARPA, the four-kilometer or more depth of over half of the world’s oceans will provide these new installations with “cheap stealth.” However, the agency also stressed that the program will not specifically be a weapons program, as the great depths also make retrieval costs expensive. Instead of weapons, the “riser” would hold “a range of non-lethal but useful capabilities such as situational awareness, disruption, deception, networking, rescue, or any other mission that benefits from being pre-distributed and hidden.” One example they cite is unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly called drones, which could sit in the ocean until called to rise to the surface and deploy for aerial reconnaissance.

    “We are simply offering an alternative path to realize these missions without requiring legacy ships and aircraft to launch the technology, and without growing the reach and complexity of unmanned platforms,” said Coon.

  • Apple Keeps Rejecting App That Notifies Users Every Time There’s a U.S. Drone Strike

    You wouldn’t think that there would be a problem with an app that aggregates news that’s currently publicly available on the web, but apparently there is. At least according to Apple.

    New York-based developers Josh Begley is befuddled. Why does Apple keep rejecting his app?

    In the latest rejection email, Apple states that they “found that [the] app contains content that many audiences would find objectionable, which is not in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines.” What objectionable content is Begley trying to push here? Porn? Hate Speech?

    Nope. Begley’s app Drones+ simply notifies users when the U.S. carries out an unmanned drone strike. Users can enable push notifications, so they receive a message whenever the news of another strike rolls in. The app also contains a map that plots all of the points where recent strikes have occurred – whether that be Pakistan, or Yemen, or anywhere else that the U.S. has an active drone campaign.

    Begley told Wired that the app doesn’t feature violent content in the form of photos of videos – just notifications based on news stories pulled from the UK’s Bureau of Investigative Journalism. These news stories are accessible to anyone online at any time, Drones+ simply aggregates them.

    This isn’t the first time that Apple has rejected Drones+, but it is the firs time that they’ve had a problem with the content. The first rejection was based on the feeling the the app was simply not useful. The second rejection had to do with an issue regarding a corporate logo.

    “If the content is found to be objectionable, and it’s literally just an aggregation of news, I don’t know how to change that,” Begley says.

  • Germany’s Pizza Delivery Service Takes To The Sky

    I love pizza delivery services. I can get the greatest food on the planet without having to leave my house. I thought that there was no way to improve upon such a perfect model, but Germany has proven me wrong.

    Students at the University of Berlin have created the flying pizza delivery service. In essence: it’s a mini-helicopter drone that delivers a hot pizza to anybody in the area. It may not be as fast as a regular car delivery, but it’s way more awesome. Check it out:

    This isn’t the first time that people have dabbled with the idea of unmanned drone delivery services. San Francisco-based TacoCopter became prominent thanks to the Internet earlier this year despite being around since 2011. Current FAA guidelines prevent people from using unmanned drones for commercial purposes though. It seems that such regulations do not exist in Germany.

    It’s important to note that the flying pizza delivery service is a student project. You’re not going to suddenly see pizza places all over Germany start delivering food via tiny helicopters. It would be totally awesome if that was the case, but the logistics for implementing flying delivery on a mass scale is a little too difficult at the moment.

    Regardless, it brings up some interesting questions. Would we be fine living in a world where physical goods are delivered via unmanned drones? We like current delivery methods because the human operating the delivery vehicle ensures the product reaches us. Too many variables come into play with unmanned drones.

    Despite all the reasons one can be against it, tiny helicopters are awesome. It becomes even better when the payload is delicious, gooey pizza.

    [h/t: Reddit]