Military Robots to Gain Advanced Sight 71
coondoggie brings us a NetworkWorld report discussing iRobot's plans to include Laser Radar technology in their military robots. Quoting:
"Specifically the robot-maker is licensing Advanced Scientific Concepts' 3-D flash Ladar which uses laser beams to scan and process targets. The system has the ability to create a virtual 3D picture of an entire area. IRobot ... believes the technology will provide new navigation and mapping capabilities for future generations of robots and unmanned ground vehicles and pave the way for autonomous vehicles to lead convoys into dangerous territory, search contaminated buildings for casualties, or enable bomb squads to safely investigate suspicious objects."
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Actually, the Military-Industrial complex wants to reap greater harvests from war.
When can I get this in my Roomba? (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, does anyone else find it disturbing that they also make military robots?
Re:When can I get this in my Roomba? (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, one day soon your Roomba will get drafted and you'll die a slow agonising death, suffocated by a sea of dust bunnies.
Don't laugh. It could happen.
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Re:When can I get this in my Roomba? (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's see... The microwave oven was originally developed by Raytheon with the Amana unit eventually getting spun off. Boeing makes lots of military airplanes and systems besides their commercial jets. General Electric makes a variety of military stuff (e.g., jet engines, radar, etc.) as well as all of their consumer stuff. United Technologies makes jet engines for both military and commercial aviation. Back when I worked at TRW the company had both the Defense Systems Group I worked for as well as TRW Credit Data.
These are just a few businesses that have both military and civilian products. Better be careful or your Roomba will form a junta with your microwave oven and toaster and take over your house.
Cheers,
Dave
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http://www.kitsune.addr.com/Firearms/Machine-Guns/GE_XM214_Minigun.htm/ [addr.com]
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I can see it now. (Score:1)
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100% Flamebait
Oh, yeah, complaining about wasting our money on war is just "flamebait". TrollMods have to destroy this discussion in order to save it.
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Lose money? Ha.
The US made buckets of money in WW2 for example, it emerged as a world superpower as a result, with more money than a thing with lots of money. Wars require resources that have to be manufactured. Manufacturing those goods makes the companies money, and people get jobs, which gives them money. This helps the economy grow.
I'm not especially pro war, as in you wouldn't catch me joining up, but I am aware of the economic ben
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The US didn't become successful because it won the 2WW. It won the 2WW because it was already on the way to become successful. Oh, and the russians helped a lot, too.
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The US didn't become successful because it won the 2WW. It won the 2WW because it was already on the way to become successful.
Seriously? The US economy was tottering along on the brink following the Great Depression, with that ass FDR's alphabet soup of make-work programs doing little more than acting as a sideshow to distract people from the fact that the economy was in the shitter. The demands on manufacturing infrastructure and technological progress created by WW2 saved our bacon. Our capacity for success was always high, but it wasn't until WW2 that it was fully realized.
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The US went through a serious recession for several years after victory in WWII.
Bullcrap. You don't know jack shit about the history of the US economy, obviously. The 1945 recession lasted 8 months, and was little more than an adjustment of the economy from wartime mobilization. There wasn't another recession until 1948, and it only lasted 11 months. In fact, the average length of the recessions since WW2 ended has been 10 months. Hell, before WW2 the average length was 18 months. The only US recession that could be even remotely said to have lasted "several years" was the Great Depre
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The 1970s economy was a lot worse than just the 16 months during the "oil crisis".
You obviously don't want to admit that war is bad for the economy. Why don't you look at the current US economy after 6 years of war, despite $TRILLIONS spent propping it up with debt. You like war. Now that's established, you're not worth listening to.
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"You like war. Now that's established, you're not worth listening to."
Thank you both for summarizing the level of political discourse this election season.
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Hopefully others can see the facts we exposed, and the failures of thoe arguments before it all crashed and burned. Practically no one changes their minds during these arguments, but I'd hope they have a chance to think again on the new info once they're safely away in private.
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The US made buckets of money in WW2 for example, it emerged as a world superpower as a result, with more money than a thing with lots of money. Wars require resources that have to be manufactured. Manufacturing those goods makes the companies money, and people get jobs, which gives them money. This helps the economy grow.
...
Now the US is pouring money into Afganistan and Iraq. Tht might not be so good for the US fiscally right now, but it may pay off eventually.
You seem to be glossing over the enourmous increases in National Debt that have gone hand in hand with every major military action starting with WWI.
WWI jumped the national debt from ~3 billion to ~25 billion
WWII ballooned the national debt even further to ~260 billion
The USA never payed off all the debt accumulated in WWII & it has only gone up since.
To claim that Afghanistan and Iraq might pay off in the future is delusional at best.
Yes, War grows the economy, but you'd have to be blind not to see th
lolturret (Score:5, Funny)
Slow Sunday, I guess (Score:1)
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Oblig. (Score:4, Funny)
Civil applications? (Score:3, Interesting)
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This story is more about how iRobot is going to field a commercial system that uses better laser sensors. Not that big of a deal really.
Does this mean (Score:3, Funny)
Autonomous? (Score:2)
So they're saying that artificial intelligence is finally just around the corner (literally and figuratively)?
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This seems to make a clear distinction between "unmanned" and "autonomous". Back to reading comprehension for you.
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FTA: future generations of robots and unmanned ground vehicles and pave the way for autonomous vehicles
This seems to make a clear distinction between "unmanned" and "autonomous". Back to reading comprehension for you.
It does make a distinction, but not the one you seem to believe it's making. The distinction is that unmanned ground vehicles as used by the military today are by and large not autonomous. In reading more about this technology in various reports, the desire is to use it in applications similar to those the DARPA Challenges presented. The vehicles will remain unmanned, but will no longer require the same level of influence exerted by external (human) controllers.
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Also consider that most places we'd use this tech in are backwards enough that they can't afford a 1960's tech RPGs, let alone millions of electronically aimed laser-searching cannons for every home.
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Finally, ASC downsizes their LIDAR. Right answer. (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a big step forward. I know this technology. Back in 2004, when we were putting our DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle together, I went down to Advanced Scientific Concepts [advancedsc...ncepts.com] in Santa Barbara to see the thing. Back then, they had a prototype that worked, but it was on an optical bench (one of those big plates with screw holes to which you attach optical components), nowhere near ready to go on a vehicle. It was just too early. We had to go with SICK rotating-mirror line scanners, like everybody else. But I was convinced it was the right direction to go, and I dragged a venture capitalist who had some underperforming photonics companies down there to see the thing. He didn't want to fund them, because they were too far from a consumer product; the near term market was DoD-only.
ASC kept working, and by 2006 they had working portable prototypes. By 2007, you could buy a LIDAR about the size of a large-format camera for about $100,000. Now they've downsized it further.
Unlike the laser scanners with spinning mirrors or sensors, which is what everyone else uses, this technology has no moving parts. The system has two main components - a pulse laser with diffusing optics, and a detection and timing IC with one LIDAR receiver per pixel. Neither of these is inherently expensive in quantity. It may take a while to get this down to webcam prices, but $1000 is a reasonable near-term target.
It's amazing that this can be done in an eye-safe way, since this approach is subject to the radar equation - returned power decreases as the fourth power of the distance. But the detectors can be made good enough. Some of their more sensitive detectors use a photomultiplier tube technology, like a night vision system. Night vision systems use a photoelectric detector plate - when a photon hits it, an electron pops out. Electric fields are used to accelerate the electron, which then hits one of the electron detectors on a specially designed IC. Photomultipliers have been around for decades, and can detect single photons. The neat thing about the photoelectric effect is that it's at the atomic level, and happens in picoseconds. So it can be used as a light amplifier for a time-of-flight LIDAR.
The current generation of compact sensor is 128x128 pixels at 30Hz. The sensors are currently smaller than the lasers, but for smaller robots where you need only 10m of range or so, a smaller laser can be used.
This is the sensor that will make automatic driving commercially feasible.
Re:Finally, ASC downsizes their LIDAR. Right answe (Score:2, Interesting)
This is true with radar, yes, because your radar beam increases spatially in two dimensions on the way to the target, ping at a point source, then diffuses again in two dimensions from there.
With lidar, you have a coherent focused beam on the way there. Lasers are generally considered to not lose any significant power over distance in a vacuum. You still have the ping, or reflection event, at which point you'll no
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I'd have to question your "returned power decreases as the fourth power of the distance" claim. ...
With lidar, you have a coherent focused beam on the way there.
Not with a flash LIDAR. There's one big broad flash spread by a beam spreader, not a mechanically scanned narrow beam. I'm amazed that it works over substantial distances. There aren't that many photons coming back per pixel. They don't spread the beam very wide; 1 to 9 degrees is typical for the longer ranged units. At shorter ranges, a
Re:Finally, ASC downsizes their LIDAR. Right answe (Score:4, Insightful)
Having said that, a *huge* problem with LIDARS (like RADARs or any other active sensors) in a military environment is that carrying a LIDAR is the same as carrying a homing device for any basic IR-targeted bomb/missile.
"Where's that convoy, Sam?"
"Put on your IR goggles and look for the huge disco light in the middle of the desert, Bob!"
"Wow, Sam, thats WICKED!"
So I'm not sure how they're addressing that, or if they're hoping for an application niche that doesn't deal with being shot at altogether.
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Yes, actives are just too visible. It doesn't matter much in urban environments, though; it's not like you can hide an Army truck driving through a town.
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IF you're looking 250 meters your flash LIDAR would get a return within 1.7 microseconds. If you create a 1.7 microsecond flash at a frequency of 10Hz you're only emitting 0.0017% of the time.
Let's say the light you pulse is as bright as a 100kW bulb (i.e. a thousand 100W bulbs). With that du
Why stereo isn't that useful (Score:2)
Stereo is useful for getting distance to nearby obstacles with edges. It's not that useful on uniform pavement (no edges to register), gravel (detail too fine), wet surfaces, etc. What you really get from stereo is depth information of varying quality across the image.
Stereo from motion is in theory more useful, since the baseline is much larger, but it's much harder to do. Humans don't r seally do stereo vision beyond a few meters; our eyes are too close together. Depth from motion is how we really
Ladar? (Score:1)
Speed (Score:1)
Project Codename (Score:2)
Not news (Score:1)
I don't get the news here. This is the standard sensor for all robots, and they've been using "lidar" for years.