In this round of 'Real life or Black Mirror episode', drones that hunt down humans by listening to their screams
- Reference: 1623243725
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/06/09/crows_nest_array_drone/
- Source link:
Yes, it's a perfectly reasonable use of technology which will definitely not come back to haunt humanity in any way, shape, or form.
"We have a lot of experience in filtering noise, such as wind noise, extremely loud helicopter noise, ground vehicles noise, and more," Fraunhofer FKIE's research fellow Macarena Varela said. "We use different types of filters to be able to reduce noise, and we use diverse detection procedures to extract the signals of interest, such as impulsive sounds or screams."
[1]
In Varela's defence, the technology is not intended to allow future autonomous battle machines - which may or may not look like the HK-Aerial craft from James Cameron's 1984 classic The Terminator - to track down the few remaining human survivors of an inevitable robot uprising by listening to their pitiful cries for mercy; instead, the Crow's Nest Array looks to locate people trapped by earthquakes, collapsed buildings, and other disasters.
[2]
"We have already successfully detected and angularly located impulsive sounds very precisely near distances with the presence of drone noise," Varela said ahead of presenting the work at the 180th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America this week.
"We will be testing the system on a flying drone to measure impulsive sounds, such as screams, and process the data with different methods to also estimate the geographical positions of the sounds."
[3]Three thousand sea birds abandon nests amid nature reserve drone crash hullabaloo
[4]Flying dildo poses a slap in the face for serious political debate
[5]You can listen right here to the whir of a robot helicopter flying on an alien world
[6]Boeing successfully flies unmanned autonomous military 'wingman' aircraft that may become pilot's buddy
In the unlikely event that the technology does get used for other purposes, staying silent may not be enough: another team at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia has unveiled [7]SNIFFDRONE , which uses chemical sensors capable of homing in on the smell of crap which would likely fill survivor's undercrackers as they flee the oncoming robot horde.
As with the Crow's Nest Array, SNIFFDRONE has been developed with a benign purpose in mind: "The developed drone allows, thanks to a combination of chemical sensors and artificial intelligence, to quickly assess the intensity of the odour emitted by a waste management plant in large areas that are sometimes difficult to access," Professor Santi Marco, head of the IBEC Signal and Information Processing for Sensing Systems Group, said of the project. "This information is relevant for the plant operators with the ultimate goal of minimising the impact on neighbouring communities." ®
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[3] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/07/drones_blamed_for_bird_disaster/
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[5] https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/08/nasa_ingenuity_sound/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/04/boeing_drone_wingman/
[7] https://www.dam-aguas.es/portfolio-posts/sniffdrone/
[8] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Wrong sound I think
In the heat of an emergency people scream, but by the time rescuers with drones have arrived I suspect people buried under rubble will be moaning rather than screaming, so that's what the drones should be listening for. However, that could lead to potentially embarrassing misunderstandings.
Re: Wrong sound I think
But for hunting down packs of teenage Justin Beiber fans - I think we can all welcome our drone overlords
Would be victims will have to find a quiet place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Quiet_Place
Wot?
No ROTM tag?
the HK-Aerial Terminator
With the noise that thing made in the film, my first thought was that it couldn't possibly hear anything. It likely tracked its victimes via radar or infrared. The fandom wiki says nothing on how it tracks, it just gives gushing praise on armaments and troop-carrying capacity.
From what I recall from the movie, soldiers on the ground were pretty much able to move around freely as long as they stayed out of line-of-sight. They could even talk, but of course, military talk, not table-side chit-chat.
Of course, having read about how we already have companies with "vast experience in filtering unwanted noise", there could well be a new timeline where the buggers can filter out their own engine noise and hear a human running. From there, we're one step away from an area-of-effect missile showering an area 50sq meters around the supposed location of the sound, and that goose is pretty much cooked.
Re: the HK-Aerial Terminator
From there, we're one step away
That someday is [1]today .
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/drone-fully-automated-military-kill-b1856815.html
Well, Shit!
We all know the road that's paved with good intentions, and now these drones don't even need a road.
But I'm sure it's fine. These technologies will not come back to hunt, err, haunt us - at all. Nope. It's all good.
I just hope there's no SNIFFDRONE near-by, it would be able to find me after reading that article