Lifeboat Foundation

And that’s just one of the ways bad guys are putting drones to use, law enforcement officials say.

DENVER, Colorado — Last winter, on the outskirts of a large U.S. city, an FBI hostage rescue team set up an elevated observation post to assess an unfolding situation. Soon they heard the buzz of small drones — and then the tiny aircraft were all around them, swooping past in a series of “high-speed low passes at the agents in the observation post to flush them,” the head of the agency’s operational technology law unit told attendees of the AUVSI Xponential conference here. Result: “We were then blind,” said Joe Mazel, meaning the group lost situational awareness of the target. “It definitely presented some challenges.”

The incident remains “law enforcement-sensitive,” Mazel said Wednesday, declining to say just where or when it took place. But it shows how criminal groups are using small drones for increasingly elaborate crimes.

Continue reading “A Criminal Gang Used a Drone Swarm To Obstruct an FBI Hostage Raid” »

Apparently needs a lot of work before it can actually operate like a eel/snake. But, i’d wrap this up in skin so it could look like a snake/eel. Give it solar power skin so it could recharge its own batteries; maybe try to use that system that was supposed to be able to eat organic matter to convert into power. Then, put a bunch of sensors on it, and HD cameras for eyes, and rig it so it could transmit to satellites. And you have a pretty impressive drone that can operate in any body of water and on land close to water.

An innovative, eel-like robot developed by engineers and marine biologists at the University of California can swim silently in salt water without an electric motor. Instead, the robot uses artificial muscles filled with water to propel itself. The foot-long robot, which is connected to an electronics board that remains on the surface, is also virtually transparent.

Continue reading “Transparent eel-like soft robot can swim silently underwater” »

There are certain classes of technology that, by their nature, put those who possess their secrets in danger: Nuclear weapons. Ballistic missiles. Advanced encryption software.

Now, add unmanned aerial vehicles—drones—to that list.

A Palestinian electrical engineer who had published research on drones was assassinated in Malaysia, the Wall Street Journal reported (paywall). A helmeted person on a motorcycle fired 10 shots at 35 year-old Fadi al-Batsh, killing him as he walked to a mosque for morning prayers.

Continue reading “The Israel-linked killing of Fadi al-Batsh in Malaysia shows that drone technology is now dangerous enough to kill for” »

Artificial intelligence

Your next pilot could be drone software

Airplanes could be safer with technology at the helm. A key sticking point is human opinion.

Continue reading “Your next pilot could be drone software” »

Robots are going to make life a lot easier for amputees and people with spinal cord injuries. Take HAL from CYBERDYNE for instance: it is robotic assistive limb that improves patients’ ability to walk. HAL uses sensors to detect signals from the patient’s body to assist with desired movement.

🛩️ Latest App Smart Drones & Multirotors

You might only know JPEG as the default image compression standard, but the group behind it has now branched out into something new: JPEG XS. JPEG XS is described as a new low-energy format designed to stream live video and VR, even over WiFi and 5G networks. It’s not a replacement for JPEG and the file sizes themselves won’t be smaller; it’s just that this new format is optimized specifically for lower latency and energy efficiency. In other words, JPEG is for downloading, but JPEG XS is more for streaming.

The new standard was introduced this week by the Joint Photographic Experts Group, which says that the aim of JPEG XS is to “stream the files instead of storing them in smartphones or other devices with limited memory.” So in addition to getting faster HD content on your large displays, the group also sees JPEG XS as a valuable format for faster stereoscopic VR streaming plus videos streamed by drones and self-driving cars.

“We are compressing less in order to better preserve quality, and we are making the process faster while using less energy,” says JPEG leader Touradj Ebrahimi in a statement. According to Ebrahimi, the JPEG XS video compression will be less severe than with JPEG photos — while JPEG photos are compressed by a factor of 10, JPEG XS is compressed by a factor of 6. The group promises a “visual lossless” quality to the images of JPEG XS.

Many large cities (Seoul, Tokyo, Shenzhen, Singapore, Dubai, London, San Francisco) serve as test beds for autonomous vehicle trials in a competitive race to develop “self-driving” cars. Automated ports and warehouses are also increasingly automated and robotized. Testing of delivery robots and drones is gathering pace beyond the warehouse gates. Automated control systems are monitoring, regulating and optimizing traffic flows. Automated vertical farms are innovating production of food in “non-agricultural” urban areas around the world. New mobile health technologies carry promise of healthcare “beyond the hospital.” Social robots in many guises – from police officers to restaurant waiters – are appearing in urban public and commercial spaces.

Tokyo, Singapore and Dubai are becoming prototype ‘robot cities,’ as governments start to see automation as the key to urban living.

Continue reading “What Will the Automated City of the Future Look Like?” »

Lyft, Mastercard, and drone companies are experimenting with artificial intelligence technologies to improve their businesses.

The software and hardware platform could make drones useful in natural disaster relief, mapping areas in 3D, and more.