In order to take over the world, all these UPenn nanorobotcopters have to do is keep you mesmerized with their cool flying while another robot walks up behind and stabs you. Via io9.
Then again, if the UPenn guys ever look up Neural Robotics Inc. we are well and truly hosed.
redshirt
Our future is going to be terrifying. Dystopia only begins to cover it.
JGabriel
As soon as I saw them flying in formation, I thought, “Oh, shit.”
Anyone else?
Edited to Add: Really a shame Alfred Hitchcock isn’t still around to do something with this.
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Yevgraf
The top vid was cool. The lower one, though, had an element of “hold muh beer and watch this” in it. It just occurs to me that strapping a full auto FN (or whatever the hell that is) with an electronic trigger on an unstable remote control rotating platform is a recipe for disaster.
Humanities Grad
I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.
I have to, they can probably trace my IP address. My momma didn’t raise no dummies.
jibeaux
Sent the top one to my ten year old, who tends to read articles about the latest advances in battery storage technology. Yes, I am hopeful that he’ll be able to support his mama in her old age.
He is going to LOVE it.
John 2.0
Isn’t that the dog pod grid from Diamond Age?
I think that’s an automatic shotgun in the second vid. I’d guess they used that weapon because it’s got some recoil-dampening system that wouldn’t mess with the control system of the drone.
redshirt
The insidious dynamic to all this is the motivations – from the scientist’s perspective, almost across the board and in the many fields necessary to contribute to these developments – they’re working on cool problems, for typical science reasons.
It’s when these tools get combined, mass produced, and put in the hands of power will the trouble start.
This of course is a long standing moral quandry in the science field. I have no easy answers as I feel we’ve crested a wave of inevitability, and only some major event can alter our course now.
MattF
I can just see a swarm of nanocopters spelling out a message– “OOPSIE…” With the dots, of course…
Reminded a bit of Ian M. Banks ‘Culture’ series, where the warships are controlled by super-AIs and have amusing names, like ‘Gunboat Diplomat’ or ‘So Much For Subtlety’:
http://www.saunalahti.fi/~mjhuur1/projects/banks/ships.html
Norwonk
Those choppers are very cool, but if those are nanorobots, then I’m a single-cell organism.
Beth in VA
Other than providing flying robot background dancers for music videos, what good are these things?
flukebucket
As Leonard Cohen once said, “I have seen the future brother and it is murder”
redshirt
@Beth in VA: Lots of things. Surveillance primarily.
Imagine thousands of these guys flying over the streets of NYC, tailing cars, peaking in windows, following pedestrians.
We’re entering the Panopticon.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@John 2.0:
My thought exactly.
I’m waiting for all of this to lead to my mech being finally built, maybe with a mustang mounted on top instead of a head.
And for all of you who argued that putting people on other planets is a waste of time and money, the flip side is we can all sit here and wait for the terrible future you all seem to think is coming.
Tim F.
@Yevgraf: The copter is not RC. It is a robot. A user can tell it where to go, land and shoot, but he can just as easily plug in those coordinates in before flight. Either way the copter figures out how to make the commands happen.
The auto-shotgun has a remarkable amount of recoil dampening. There is another vid of a 92-pound girl shooting it one-handed.
The Moar You Know
I’m an avid R/C pilot. All I can say about that first video is HOLY SHIT. Impressive hardly begins to cover it. Flying robots are here, and they’re getting small!
I’ve seen the second video plenty of times. I believe the weapon is the AA-12 automatic 12 gauge shotgun, a fearsome weapon to be sure, but there’s nothing really groundbreaking from a remote piloting perspective. It’s all off-the-shelf tech that’s been around for at least thirty years.
JGabriel
flukebucket:
So … no change then from the past and present?
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superking
Let’s teach them to box!
PurpleGirl
I’ve read military science fiction for many years (along with space opera and fantasy). That doesn’t mean that I want to live in those future dystopias though.
The technology may be way cool but the implications for society and culture are large and not in a good sense.
JGabriel
Speaking of “Whuh?”
Via Thers @ Powder Blue Satan:
No, that’s not a shorter. And it’s not snark.
Erickson actually and literally says, on national radio, “… watching a hippie protester get tased just makes my day.”
Fuckin’ sociopath shitbag.
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John 2.0
Dibs on the Yellow Lion.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@Beth in VA:
One big area is rescue missions: Send a flock of these down into a mineshaft, burning building, or any other place too unstable/radioactive/chemically polluted for humans. You could send a flock of these into the Fukishima complex, to take a look around. Or into a building known to contain enemy combatants, instead of having the Seals have to barge in without knowing what to expect.
They could fly around a hospital or school, spraying disinfectants. Or fly around a disaster area, not just to look for survivors, but they could also deliver announcements over tiny speakers. Then park themselves at various locations, to set up an emergency wireless network to assist rescue personnel.
Anyway, there’s a lot of applications, and the know-how and price point has reached critical mass. This will probably be the decade where coordinated/flocking robotic systems become mainstream (much like the 90s were the era when the internet went mainstream).
Those afraid of excessive surveillance or other dystopian scenarioes need to realize that this stuff is coming, whether people want it to or not: You could no more stop this than your grandpa could stop the automobile or the airplane.
Engineers just build the stuff. It’s up to voters, lawyers and governments to determine which uses are appropriate, and which are not.
jeffreyw
More than way cool. I can easily imagine a consumer version that could be sent aloft with a tiny video camera, sending pics back via wifi if fairly close, maybe through a cell tower if out of sight. Useful for hunting lost dogs, esp if it could home in on the dog’s collar and tell it to get home this instant. Or kids, telling them to get offa my yard, dammit.
flukebucket
@JGabriel:
If you have seen one you have seen them all.
JGabriel
@flukebucket: It just amazes me how frequently Conservative reality exceeds our satire of it. It’s astonishing, really.
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The Moar You Know
@JGabriel: I can empathize with Gauleiter Erickson. I love seeing those Tea Partiers get their government-purchased scooters stuck in that crevice between the sidewalk and road while their oxygen runs out.
Every time I see that, I think “should I help?” Then the words of Peggy Noonan come back to me and I heed them.
Just walk on by.
JGabriel
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor:
Maybe. A lot of the smaller, co-ordinated robotic systems are still in prototype stages. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see it go mainstream in the latter half of this decade, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if it happens in the next decade, the 2020’s, instead.
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JGabriel
@The Moar You Know:
We’re not talking about verbal hijinks here. Perhaps I haven’t made that clear.
Erickson is talking about watching actual video of someone being tased … and laughing.
These are the so-called “small government” conservatives enjoying the unrestrained use of state force against unarmed activists. Tell me about their “principles” again?
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kindness
Thank the FSM it’s U Penn & not Penn State. I would be afraid of what those robots would be programmed for if it were the latter.
Rafer Janders
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor:
Engineers just build the stuff. It’s up to voters, lawyers and governments to determine which uses are appropriate, and which are not.
So we’re fucked, then, is what you’re saying.
PaulW
Oh great. We just designed Hunter/Killers for Skynet’s future use. Thanks a lot, tech guys!
Zandar
TINYCOPTERS IN MY ERRYWHERE.
redshirt
@Rafer Janders: We’re fucked, and plethora of ways.
Rafer Janders
@JGabriel:
Erickson is talking about watching actual video of someone being tased … and laughing.
You know, I never say “tased” or “tasered” or any of those terms. I say “electrocuted.” As in “the police electrocuted him” or “shocked him with painful electricity”. “Tased” is a euphemism, and its use covers up and hides the terrifying brutality of what is actually going on.
Try it yourself: “Police tase protestors” versus “police electrocute protestors.” Which sounds worse?
CarolDuhart2
I have an idea. Use these things to detect and then later detonate, unexploded landmines or old ordinance. The way we do it now is pretty dangerous to people, and uncertain. This method would be safe and accurate, and since drones don’t get tired or stressed, fields can be repeatedly gone over until all traces were gone.
Neddie Jingo
@jeffreyw:
Dude, we’re already there… And you control the damned thing with an iPhone! It’s not the “nano” tech on display in this post, but… dayum!
Here’s a POV vid of a quadcopter in action. I really, really want one of these things….
PIGL
Judgement Day is inevitable.
MariedeGournay
@John 2.0: And I’ll form the head.
JGabriel
@Rafer Janders: Good point. Thanks.
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Jamey
In formation, the little guys look like the ur-video game, Space Invaders.
Jamey
@JGabriel: Meh. Watching Erick Erickson get torn apart by trained animals would make my day. Guess it’s that kind of day…
The Other Bob
I will just buy my own fleet of robotic copters with flyswaters to fight off the random robots that stray into my airspace.
Jeff Boatright
@JGabriel:
This is such a great distillation of the situation that I have decided that you WIN THE INTERTOOBES FOR THE DAY!!!
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@Rafer Janders:
Well… if “they” can use it, so can you.
redski
fuck this shit.
Xenos
@The Moar You Know: As to Erik Erikovich, it makes my day when fascists get strung up on the lampposts. Good times.
dance around in your bones
Haysus Freakin Crisco, didn’t these guys see The Terminator?
That said, those formation flights and 3-D formations are pretty awesome.
The prophet Nostradumbass
That first video made me think of Half-Life 2.
Jay in Oregon
@JGabriel:
The thing that surprises me is that they think — once they’ve managed to efficiently demonize liberals and “hippies” and poor people and gays and minorities and march them to their “final solution” — that those methods they use will magically disappear and never be turned on them.
There’s no chance that a right-wing fascist society will simply find new enemies to demonize, is there?
No chance that Catholics can become the new boogeymen?
Swarthy people of any European descent?
Will childless couples be persecuted?
People from the West Coast?
People who fail to sing “God Bless America” enthusiastically enough?
Martin Niemöller was on the right track…
Scott P.
It’s clear our feline overlords have finally succeeded in inducing their human slaves to make the world’s coolest cat toy.
THE
You could write pointillistic nerdy Valentines to your significant other.
This is February you know.
ruleoflaw
Are they being piloted by nano-shriners?