Microdrone Soup

we wouldn't necessarily want that. I think that we have enough media streaming about him. We don't necessarily need a microdrone hanging out in his bedroom exactly. Yeah. Um, but yeah, I mean it's it's The New York Times had a great article called war evolves with drones. Some Tinese bugs and also the larger, more conventional drones were recently in the news. They were the ones that gathered intelligent on Osama bin Lan's Pakistani hideaway using one of the new

stealth drones. Uh So, this is the technology that is getting a lot of traction these days, and it's pretty important. And the microdrone thing is incredibly cool. And definitely feeds into my paranoia about privacy and your paranoia is that tiny robots are listening to every word you say and watching you change clothes or something. Yes, yeah, yeah, perv

tiny probos outside my window wearing little trench coats. Well it's uh, it's interesting, um talking about paranoia because Iran, that the government of Iran has A has shown some paranoid that and I'm not saying it's it's uh, it's it's it's bad paranoia because uh that they've they've been uh, there've been a couple of stories in the last few years. In two thousand eight, they they arrested a quote arrested to pigeons that were a suspected of spying near a

uranium and richmon facility. And in two thousand seven, fourteen squirrels were supposedly captured. That we're armed with state of the art espionage equipment, um, which they sound ridiculous arresting squirrels and and uh and and pigeons. But but the charge was here that these were animals that had been geared up with some sort of espionage equipment and were being used by an outside force, probably the United States,

to see what they were doing. So, but imagine that that paranoia taking a step farther to where it's where it's the paranoia is that the squirrels may not actually be squirrels. They may be robots. The birds maybe robots spying on us. The bugs may actually be robots spying on our every move and uh and if and certainly if you're a country like Iran, uh, this could be

a very well possibility in the near future. Well, and also think that the context too, I mean with stuck snut in Iran, which we know is the computer virus that was developed to essentially like bring down the nuclear capacity, shut down the system. So you can understand why they might take help look around a park and start to get a little bit paranoid about the nearest chipmunk, right, especially since this is where the technology has been headed and and where it's continuing to to to head with

with with some real impressive speed. Yeah, and when we talk about a drone, let's and particularly a microdrone, let's talk about what this is. This is essentially a super fancy remote controlled plane, and it's an unmanned aerial vehicle, yes, generally with some degree of autonomy. Um, there's a there's an important distance. Like the most famous examples are the Predator and the and the Reaper, which are have been

just to stand out aerial drones for the U. S. Military. Uh. And we have an article on on both of these on the House Stuff Work website. So if you go to the House Touff House Stuff Works, go to the search bar, putt in Predator or put in a Reaper, and you'll you'll get a really nice article. Yeah, and it'll tell you everything under the because we're not going to really go into the hood with these in this podcast.

But but they are really cool. Um, I mean just the technology, you know, not any judgments on how they're used. But but but it's really interesting technology. So uh, it basically comes down to all these things are what we call in in the loop system. Okay, so they're not they're not really robots out there, you know. You know, you're not creating a machine and saying, hey, go out and kill go out and do this job and then

come back and tell me how it went. On the other hand, it's not a guy setting there you know, uh and controlling it the whole time. It's uh, it's programmed to a certain degree. Yeah, it's it's essentially someone who's at at the controls to uh, to dictate the application of lethal force. Right, So it's kind of a

hybrid between autonomy and remote control and UH. That's basically the state of these U A vise, these UM, these amand aerial vehicles that that are out there really in most of the skies over military zones that that the US is engaged in, that's right, And they're there are two different types. There's of surveillance drones, right, and there

are combat drones with missiles. Surveillance like the UM. It would be like a predator just just seeing what the ladle land is, right or or in this case what we're talking with us and bin Laden used to tell where a target is and then the means of reaching

that target may actually just be troops or Yeah. And it's very unusual that they will use a combat drone to take out UM like a compound like UM some op in lands which they did not, but you know, from time to time they've taken out all kind of members. If they were say driving UM in a car, you know, across the highway or whatever, they would use UM one of these drones to blow up the car. But again

this is unusual. It's more likely used for surveillance. But um obviously if it's a combat drone and it's got missiles, then there's a higher level of engagement with the person was controlling it. Um. So this is from a Wired article. Rather, this is from their their Danger Roum, their blog. Um it says unmanned aerial vehicles are huge growth industry for the US and its closest allies, and the source of

one of America's greatest military advantages. Starting in the mid ninety nineties, the unarmed Predator drone helped the US build an unprecedented persistent surveillance system capable of spotting targets around the clock. Later, armed with missiles, the Predator became an aerial sniper, picking off hundreds of of insurgents in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan every year. So the Pentagon has scores of communication satellites for linking drones and ground troops and imagery analysts.

And the Pentagon now has some seven thousand aerial drones compared with fewer than fifty just a decade ago. So, as you can see, this is a really important part of how the US is is uh, sort of trying to figure out this war on terror as their calling it, and just general security around the world. Yeah, I mean

the advantages here are huge. Um, just to run through a few of them here, I mean most obviously, you replace putting a soldier into a dangerous situation and uh, and that's why there's there's there's a lot of effort towards creating land based drone technology too, and there have been a number of these have been tested, but nothing is really the standard. It hasn't been standardized in the same way that these U A v s or are

ruling the skies now. Um. Then, but another important thing that reduces civilian casualties have used properly and if you have sufficient ethical programming developed, which is that's kind of like looking forward not so much now. Um. It also acts as a looking forward to. It could act as a force multiplier where um, you know, we talked about this in the loop situation, Man in the loop where there's a guy controlling it, uh, you know, and he's gonna jump in and you know, do the fine tuning

or the application of lethal force. But they're they're talking about eventually moving it towards a man on the loop where you basically have like one guy manning a team of robots. Um. So there'd be these like you know, maybe six different U a v S mostly doing their own thing, with one guy supervising and uh you know, jumping into micro manage as need be. But that would be a force multiplier because then you have one basically have one combat pilot um in like six places at once,

which um so. And then then there are a number of other advantages that that break down to the use of robots in warfare, which is, uh, you don't have anger, revenge, hunger, fear uh thrown in there with to to modify what's going on in the battlefield, um and uh. And it's just and they can also generally make faster decisions than humans, though that decision making process, of course, is something that that requires a great deal of discussion. Yeah, there's been

a lot of questions ethically around that. Right so, um because there's this this growing disconnect between the American public and its wars and the drone. Again, the advantages that you're not putting anybody in harm's way, at least on the American front, right, but there is again, that distance between what is you know, what we're actually doing to someone else and uh, you know, the decision making process.

So the farther the distance is, the easier it is to sort of make that decision, right, right, It's I mean it comes back to the thing where it just makes waging war potentially easier and killing potentially easier, because I mean, on one hand, like what's the huge um like, like, what's the worst thing that an army government engaged in military activity wants to see? Uh? And that is uh, images of coffins coming home with with dead servicemen and

women in it. You know, that's just that's like, you know, pr nightmare. Things could be avoided. We've seen it, you know, banned in the past. But but if you remove that, where suddenly nothing there's like no risk to servicemen and women, you know, suddenly there are minimal risk, Like like it becomes a situation where the fear of one's own death or the fear of death of of of one's you one cares about, or just seeing the carnage you're not going to see the carnage on your own side because

of all these robots. No, But of course the problem is is that we've seen this time and again Afghanistan. You have clian civilian casualties and um. The reason is is that when when you've got this sort of technology, it's essentially painting a target, the painting a target with a laser. There there's a host of variables that the computer has to calibrate the system for. So that includes wind, speed, direction and other battlefield variables. So something can go wrong.

It's very possible in any technology, there's going to be a margin of air and deaths are going to happen. Well, even if it works perfectly, if you're you're using a basically robotic army against human insurgents, humans are gonna die on one side and robots will occasionally crash on the other. And it's a there's a there's a certain there's a

large inequity there. Yeah. Yeah, And again the main problem here is this question of autonomy as we go forward with this technology, because it will become more and more autonomous, right, this is the idea. I mean, you know, typically technology doesn't go backward, right, so if we create a system that is more enhanced that it can make more decisions

than the margin of error could possibly go up. And we've talked with Dr Arkin from Georgia Tech before, who is a robotics ethicist and uh in deals with warfare and robots quite a bit, and he was talking about programming robots with UM the Geneva protocol, right, Yeah, having this ethnical ethical governor and the would they would dictate how it's going to carry out it's it's military, right,

which makes sense. I mean, this is a this is a good step forward, right because if you can program that, if you can give the algorithm for for you know, if and then then you can avoid some some of the pitfalls. The problem is that people will point out is a robots do not have a nuanced ability to deal with emotions, and we know that emotions, for better or worse, can guide our judgment. So you've you know, on the one hand, you've got the passion of war

is reduced with these UM autonomous machines. But on the other hand, you know, there's this empathy and so on and so forth that sort of makes us humans and human makes us UM create exceptions, is not there? Yeah, And I mean modern warfare, especially such a chaotic situation, and we're having there are enough obstacles and just creating

a robot that can navigate the human kitchen. Yeah, you know, so it's uh, the the idea of creating a robot that could they could seamlessly navigate the environment of war, an environment that humans cannot even navigate without catastrophe is uh, it is quite a hurdle to overcome. Yeah, and so but you know, here we've got these micro drones, which

at this point they're not lengthal right, they're just surveilling. UM. So to talk a little bit more about the micro drones and less about UM drones like the predator, just kind of consider this stat again, this is from Wired. This is since September eleventh, UM, the hours the Air Force devotes to flying missions for intelligent surveillance and reconnaissance have gone up three thousand one, most of that from

increased operations of drones. Every day, the Air Force must process almost fifteen hundred hours of full motion video and another fifteen hundreds still images, much of it from predators and reapers on around the clock combat air patrols. Okay, that is a huge amount of data. Now consider this micro aviary camouflage, this microdrone, UM, these you know, tiny little drones that are being developed and how much data

they're going to be amassing. But before we talk about that, we probably talk about just the micro aviary UM drone because it's pretty cool. All Right, we're gonna take a quick break and then we're gonna get back to all of this. So hanging there one second. This presentation is brought to you by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow, and we're back when we're talking about biomimicry trying to make a drone that looks like a bird, flies like a bird, or flies like an insect, depending on you know which

which direction they're going there. But this is fascinating in that biomamicry is generally more involved in I want to solve a problem, like an engineering problem or design problem of some kind, instead of trying to create some sort of like reinvent the wheel, I'm just gonna look at the way um nature has solved this problem through millions of years of evolution, So you know, it's stuff like I want to make a swimsuit that allows the swimmer

to uh to move faster through the water. Uh. Instead of just trying to come with something off the top of my head, I'm going to look at how shark skin has evolved right right, or um or fins. I'm gonna look at dolphins and see how they can actually like eject themselves into the air and so on and so far. We actually have a couple of articles on biomimicry on the website. If you go to house stuff works dot com and just throw bio mimicry into the search bar, you'll find a couple of them. I think

I may have written two of them. Probably did I don't know. Yeah, we're a handful of them. Um. But from my understanding that they are focusing more on insects right now rather than birds. Um. And I'm assuming that they've done birds so far because it's very hard to get you know, smaller and smaller. But birds are a little bit more difficult to mimic because of their musclature and because of the energy it takes to get them.

That's the interesting thing about this, because most, like I say, biomimicry is about I need to solve a problem, so I'm gonna see how nature did it right, This is more about I mean, there's in robotics, there is that there's also a lot of interest in how insects move and behave because it's it's a sometimes it's a simple cognitive model to look at in terms of how it's thinking. And then also like you know, trying to create something

that's gonna move across the floor. Uh. Some oftentimes, like a spider design just makes more sense than trying to make it walk like a human. So but but in this where they're trying to make a drone resemble the animal form. Uh. And certainly when we're talking about something that flies, uh, the nature is kind of forced to follow this this winged model, this flapping winged model, which is really not um all that that that doesn't make

a lot of sense from an energy standpoint. It's not you have to spend a lot of energy to flap flap wings, but nature has not yet figured out how to evolve the rotor blade, so so that they're they're

they're forced to flap. Um. But we've all seen stats about like hummingbirds, about how much food they have to consume and how much energy they blow through to flap those tiny wings so fastbeats per minute or something crazy like yeah, yeah, like some of them have to go into basically a state of hibernation and every night just because because they can't burn any more energy. Um, because

it's not energy efficient. So they're having to when creating a flap of flapping winged robot Um, you're you're having to pursue u an energy inefficient design when you could really make a more energy eficient design being inspired by it. They're actually trying to mimic it so that nobody can tell that it's an actual robotic hummingbird spying on you, right, Um, So it's kind of a disingenuous form of biomimicry. Yeah,

it's interesting. There's that the hummingbird drone that they unveiled. Um, it's it's still a prototype, but it can rapidly beat its wings and it can propel the at eleven miles per hour and even perch on a window. So the problem is when you look at it, you know, if you just kind of if you glance it, didn't really look at it carefully. Okay, yeah, there's I see a bird, right, But when you look at it, it actually looks really inelegant. It moves, you know, kind of awkwardly, it looks mechanical.

It reminds me completely of Biboo, the owl from Clash of the Times. Yes, the robotic owl that does the which I love, but I don't really think would make a great microdone right because it's very obvious. Well plus the hummingbird drone it says US Air Force on the wing. It's giveaway. Yeah, a little obvious. Um, but I mean they're they're important because these micro jones could be used to get a much better view of myriad things like

natural disasters, floods, fires, Um, you know if the politicians. Yes, Um, they're used in aerial photography and and they're even used in wildlife footage which are seen in nature documentaries. So and again, like you know, if a building implodes and there's uh, you know a lot of debris. These are things that we can use to get a better beat on things. It's not just you know, used for warfare.

So they're really interesting and uh it kind of makes me wonder like if one day we're all going to have our very own micro own that we use, like I don't know, in in conjunction with our an iPhone app, so that we're on a zip line on vacation, you know, you just throw up your microdrone, get some really great footage, or you leave your microdone behind to attend meetings when you go out of town. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, anyway,

I digress. We should probably get back to the actual military military applications of it, because if you if you throw it into this this this overall design that is this idea of like a robotic military, you can easily imagine like the micro Jones sort of doing the first level scouting and surveillance, and then there's there there's like a higher level of surveillance with with larger flying vehicles, and then you have the the attack you a these

little it'll actually hit the target when needed, and then meanwhile, like all the humans are back at their base. Just yeah yeah, and they're also I wanted to mention us too, they're trying to increase the area that they can actually surveil. And right now they have what is called a soda straw view, uh you know with the with the drones, but um, they're looking at a gorgon stair technology that's

what they're calling it. Yeah, and again that's another great band title, right well, and another clash in the Times reference, right oh, Because the idea is it's like a lot of little straws that are going to be like the snakeheads on the Medusa. I'm assuming so that are just going to freeze the landscape that it's looking at. It seems like they we just want to want. They must be really into Greek mythology or Clash of the times, because it seems like you just wanna, you know, compare

to the the the eye structure of a fly. Yeah, I don't know whoever is uh doing all the marketing for this really has a good beat on histrionics, I have to say, because I mean if the the stealth drone that was used in Pakistans called the Beast of Kindahar, I mean nuts, how do you not love that? Uh? But anyway, this gorgon stair technology can capture live video an entire city. But that requires two thousand analysts process the data feeds from a single drone compared with nineteen

analysts per drone today. That being side, this is something technology that's going to be used pretty soon. Um, that's not much of a force multiplier. Though if that many people were required to sift through the data exactly exactly, and then again that's you couldn't actually send those people out to perch on, uh, somebody's shoulder in a war zone or you know, in an enemy nation's capital. That's the rub. We cannot shrink ourselves yet yet yet. But of course what does this do. This is kind of

freaking out some people. Why because this could be used for non warfare applications. And in fact, there's a great Washington Post article called domestic use of aerial drones by law enforcement likely to prompt privacy debate and you know

how this feeds into my whole privacy thing. By two thousand and thirteen, the f A expects to have formulated new rules that would allow police across the country to routinely fly lightweight on armed drones up to four feet above ground, high enough for them to be largely invisible eyes in the sky. And uh, it's it's cost like fifty bucks, so it's really not that expensive. It's actually

less than a police helicopter. So it's very likely that this is going to be used a lot in the future, but it can with the The rub is is that they can record activities of public below with high resolution infrared and thermal imaging cameras. So you'll reach a point where someone like people will scattered there like, oh, my goodness, is a police pigeon. Well it's not. You know, it's not a real pigeon, it's it's mechanical. Well this for this application, then it will be an actual like says no,

like drone. But you know, obviously, um, this could become minature. It could become cost effective enough to get a micro drone. I mean we're talking about that, this is going to happen. Who knows about microdrones might be in use all the time. What does that mean my bonfire? When I'm playing kumbay on my guitar, they're going to be seeing that. Nobody needs to see that. Now that the the idea of like a totally automated military like it, it fascinates me

on two well on multiple levels. But two things immediately come to mind. First of all, the Dark Crystal. Have you seen the Dark Crystal? I've not seen the Dark Crystal. I feel like it comes up there like every want someone in our conversations and I have to see it.

Well it's it's a classic. And but but in this world of the Dark Crystal, you have the evil Skexies who all kind of look like grotesque vultures and in costume, and you know they're they're cowardly and they stick to their their castle, and they want to hunt down the gelf links. Uh, that's their thing and uh. And so they send out these like these crystals that are on bat wings, the spy everywhere to try and find the

gulf links. And if they find the gelf links, then they send out these giant beetle monstrosities that shamble into the village to try and chop them to pieces or

bring them back captive. And so I would hate to see, like, you know, our nation follow the skexy model of military conguest to where we're a bunch of you know, disgusting vulture creatures who just send out are strange creations to get what we want from the surrounding world because it becomes easier to do so suddenly you need more resources. Well I don't have to actually fight a war. I just send off these robots to uh to secure it for me. It becomes this, you know, kind of a

robotic surgical colonialism. Um. And then on the other hand, what happens when you have two opposing forces each with a robot military does does war? Ever? End. If too robot armies are fighting each other, it becomes who runs

out of parks first? Right, Yeah, It's interesting because right now the United States is certainly on the cutting edge of this, right, but everybody wants it on the game and they will and and in fact that the Danger Room on Wired talks about how China is actually really like a couple of decades behind on this technology and they will eventually um catch up. But I mean, for right now, you know we're we're the big game changer on this, but I mean, this is this is the

whole thing. I can sure we're game changers now, but twenty thirty years from now, how is it going to be used against us? And or will it be used against us? And that's that's the danger. Whenever you introduce a new technology, right yeah, you're you're actually essentially introducing

it against yourself at some point. Well I guess I just hope that if if if worse came to worse, and like the robots of us and the robots of China we're about to fight, the Japan's Mecca Godzilla would would jump in and just calm everybody down, like like pulled up both of its claws and be like, all right, guys, settle it. Let's settle down. Yeah, yeah, most certainly, and then hopefully their technology will have filtered down to us and we can all just pull over our vending machine.

Um cloaks, right that they've developed, Well they're not really cloaks, but you know what I'm talking to I've told you about this all right, where you look like a vending machine, right, it's actually like this little zip up thing that you can have that you erect. You know, it's it's portable, you can have it in your backpack, you whip it out, you set it up like a tent, and all of a sudden you look like a vending machine. I see,

that's good. I like I like that use of our ingenuity rather than let's figure out better ways to blow each other up. But I will say a microdrone app would be pretty cool on a zip line, would it? Like, instead of getting on the zip line, you would sense you have a microdone who actually filming while you're on the microdraze. Well, yes, that would be good. And I

should also also mentioned to the Google CEO. I can't remember the name of this cat, but he purchased a microdone for his own personal use, which freaked a bunch people out because, of course they thought that Google was going to start using instead of street view, you know, microdrones. Huh well, I would be more concerned if, like it seems like the better use of that for a large

corporation would be corporate espionage. Yes, y mm hmm. Well, if we see something flying around here that looks like people, we will know corporate espionage is going on. Yeah yeah, well yeah, so hopefully everybody knows to be a little more afraid of that unidentified bug or bird buzzing around outside the office. Now. Uh so, let's turn our attention to a little listener mail. All right, Eric, right, son, it says, I just wanted to share a quickie with you.

It's untrue that the platypus does not get respect. We respect the animal. Here in Oregon. The Platypus Trophy is awarded every year to the winner of the Civil War. The n c A a rivalry football game held between the Saintly, Beautiful and Awesome University of Oregon Ducks in the Evil, Ugly Vile Oregon State Beavers. Because the two team maskets are the Dusk, the ducks and the beavers. Someone carved a beautiful wooden platypus that is now used

as the trophy pome. Well that is pretty awesome. Yeah yeah, because it's kind of not really but it's sort of thematic. Yeah, nicely done, thanks er. Yeah. So, um hey, if you guys want to share anything with us, you can first of all find us on Twitter, Facebook. We are blow the Mind on both of those and uh we populate bocos fees with all sorts of cool links and thoughts and uh and you know stuff about our upcoming episodes, and you can always drop us a line at Blow

the Mind at how stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.