Surveillance Robot That is Programmed To Hide 148
An anonymous reader writes "The folks over at Lockheed Martin have just released information about their new covert robot that can sneak up on buildings, detect and evade sentries, and send reconnaissance information back to the good guys. From the article: 'What makes the robot special is its ability to build a computer model of its surroundings, incorporating information on lines of sight. The robot is fitted with a laser scanner to allow it to covertly map its environment in 3D. It also has a set of acoustic sensors which it uses to distinguish nearby footsteps and their direction.'"
Stalkerbot is for criminal investigations! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Hey they just crossed ninjas with robots.
There is no bad here.
Nah, it's a (Score:2)
Geocache with legs! =)
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If you have nothing to hide, and you don't even know that you're being spied on, then there is no problem and you have nothing to fear!
[/sarcasm]
better verify that (Score:5, Funny)
...and send reconnaissance information back to the good guys
So if I know for sure that I'm the bad guy, I definitely don't want to be using one of these.
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...and send reconnaissance information back to the good guys
So if I know for sure that I'm the bad guy, I definitely don't want to be using one of these.
Or worse: I am not using one of these and I know that Western government like spying on their own citizens, so I must be one of the bad guys!
(I guess that means it's time that I start constructing my underground secret lair!)
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Who are the good guys? I thought they've all been killed off or made irrelevant.
Btw, bad guy leaders reading my stuff. I am a future commander in a resistance movement that is predicted to shake things up, but i am easily bribed with blackjack and hookers. You know what, forget the blackjack.
well, actually... if you're one of "the bad guys" (Score:2)
You would have your robot(s) level everything in sight. You don't need to do no stinkin' surveillance.
Degrees of definition (Score:2)
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Ha. They don't spell it out, but obviously it comes with an ideology chip, which makes sure only people with the correct ideology can use it.
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1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Re:Degrees of definition (Score:5, Funny)
0. KILL ALL HUMANS
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Of course, how useful these rules are really depends on how 'human' is defined for the robot.
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Why do people quote these laws as if they're laws of nature?
I guess you also believe that all kinds of paper, under all conditions, ignite at precisely 505.927778 kelvin.
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I believe that under all kinds of conditions paper beats rock.
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But scissors cut paper, and rock breaks sissors.
Kiff, we have a conundrum.
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totally.
you ever see "Demolition Man"?
Re:Degrees of definition (Score:4)
So, if the "bad guys" have this, does it still transmit information to the "good guys"? I suspect the good guys are simply the fellows with the bigger checkbook. But I'm an optimist.
Its robotic relativism.
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To a robot, "The Good Guys" are the ones supplying your electricity!
A robot has to eat (Rule 3). Its hard to tell good juice from bad, especially after a long pilgrimage to an outlet.
Re:Degrees of definition (Score:5, Insightful)
The "good guys" are the ones with the robots. The "bad guys" are the ones without them.
It's kind of like, the "good guys" always win the wars, because their side is writing the history books. The "bad guys" are the ones who were bombed to oblivion, either with conventional bombs or nukes.
Consider World War II. As written by the allied forces. America was not involved in the war. We were innocently sitting by, letting them fight it out. Suddenly out of nowhere, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. No one expected any such thing. We were not involved. Just ignore the fleet of about 100 ships in port, 3 aircraft carriers nearby, about 400 aircraft on the ground, and all the troops.
If it were written by the Axis forces. America was staging for a strong attack against Axis forces. A pre-emptive strike managed to substantially reduce their strength, which reduced their ability to harm Axis soldiers and civilians.
And we all know which way it went. Dropping two nukes on Japan ended it. Consider both points of view.
For the allied forces, it was a strong blow to prove our military superiority, which ended the war.
For the axis forces, the massacre of about 200,000 civilians forced our surrender, to save countless lives from further attacks.
That is not to belittle the events of the war, or the tragic loss of life on both sides. It's only to illustrate how the perception of the outcome from such events is totally tainted by those who won. Of course the "good guys" won.
How about those WMD's now.
Re:Degrees of definition (Score:5, Informative)
"As written by the allied forces. America was not involved in the war. We were innocently sitting by, letting them fight it out. Suddenly out of nowhere, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. No one expected any such thing. We were not involved. Just ignore the fleet of about 100 ships in port, 3 aircraft carriers nearby, about 400 aircraft on the ground, and all the troops."
As I remember it in the US history book that I read, Japan was busy expanding to the south, China, and the Philippines in search of more land and resources. We were telling them that they needed to stop, or we'd be forced to intervene and blockade. They decided that a pre-emptive strike was in order. We didn't expect a conventional attack on Pearl, but were guarding against Japanese sabotage. They thought an attack would give them time they needed. It didn't.
"Dropping two nukes on Japan ended it. ... For the allied forces, it was a strong blow to prove our military superiority, which ended the war."
For the allied forces, it was a bluff made to prove our military superiority in an attempt to quickly end the war. If it didn't work, a long, drawn-out conventional invasion of the Japanese homeland would have killed hundreds of thousands of Allied and Japanese soldiers and Japanese civilians in an operation that would have made all of the earlier Pacific operations look like cakewalks.
And it just so happens that these versions of history tie pretty closely to those espoused by the Japanese, in particular, Fading Victory: The Diary of Admiral Matome Ugaki. There are also several revisionist attempts, including Day of Deceit.
Just goes to show that the presentation of history isn't always as one sided as one might believe.
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Also to expand on your point about the nuking of Japan being mainly to avoid a long protracted invasion.
We're still using the Purple Hearts that were made in anticipation of hundreds of thousands of casualties that would have arisen from Operation Downfall. From wikipedia
Nearly 500,000 Purple Heart medals were manufactured in anticipation of the casualties resulting from the invasion of Japan. To the present date, all the American military casualties of the sixty years following the end of World War II—including the Korean and Vietnam Wars—have not exceeded that number. In 2003, there were still 120,000 of these Purple Heart medals in stock.
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Well, I can't see how not to wipe entire cities of someone who's already willing to cease hostilities and instead showing them that you can wipe them can be idiotic. Specially considering that the US had the obvious advantage by completely controlling the Japanese air space.
Anyway, the attack on Pearl Harbor was far from being a blunder. It was the best option given the circumstances. It was a brilliantly executed and planned strategic move, given the assumption that the US would enter the war sooner or lat
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The Japanese didn't surrender after the first nuke. Had they known we only had two, they might have not surrendered after the second either.
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Not to mention if the war went on much longer the Russians might have gotten into Japan too.
Then we might have ended up with a situation like Germany, with a split state.
They did [wikimedia.org]. We did.
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(FYI, I posted this earlier, but I forgot to login so it fell below the threshold)
Actually, the Japanese plan almost worked. They're intent was not to overpower the US quickly and prevent us from joining the war effort, it was to cripple the US fleet in the Pacific in order to delay our entry long enough so that by the time we did join in (it was inevitable anyway) they would have a strong enough foothold on the South Pacific to withstand any attack we could muster. They also destroyed several British ships
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"The Japanese might have been able to dig in deeper and establish better air superiority and supply routes if that had happened."
They also missed their second-best target. The second wave was supposed to hit auxiliary targets, including the island's military fuel dumps and supplies. If they'ed simply carried through with that then the carriers wouldn't have mattered, as carriers without fuel aren't going anywhere.
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And other history books (the ones you have to use your own money to buy) mention that there were lots of reports coming in that strongly suggested an attack eminent. Not a false flag per se, but possibly an allowed action to elicit support where there was none. Personally, I believe the accepted account in this case: we expected attack, but we didn't know where. And that it was blessing in disguise as the fleet would have been decimated if they met at sea being out matched even fully manned (with recovery/r
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Study the Battle of Okinawa, and you'll see what happened to innocent civilians during a conventional invasion.
"Okinawan civilian losses in the campaign were estimated to be between 42,000 and 150,000 dead (more than 100,000 according to Okinawa Prefecture). The U.S. Army figures for the campaign showed a total figure of 142,058 civilian casualties, including those who were pressed into service by the Japanese Imperial Army."
Some were killed accidentally, some because Allied forces had trouble telling milit
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Gee, funny that nobody has had that thought before!
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"History is written by the winners." -- Alex Haley
Gee, funny that nobody has had that thought before!
Yep, it's "his story", the story of the guy who survived to write it. The dead guy's story (generally) remains untold.
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I'm sitting now in an area that was occupied by Japanese in WWII, all up, they killed about 30,000,000 Chinese civilians. Close to that number of Soviet Citizens were killed during their war with Germany and you are talking about 200,000 as if it was a big number. That's the same as what? Like the body count of a month of Japanese occupation in Nanjing? Unless you want to come out and start denying the holocaust also, you can take your revisionist history and shove it.
You were right about one thing, America
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It was more just a smarmy shot referencing the strategic lack of oil by the Axis powers, not really meant to be a serious social commentary, but I am glad you were trolled by it anyway. The thrust of what I am saying was about America's unwillingness to get involved in defending rights during WWII until they absolutely were given no other option. This is not to rank the appeasers that controlled Congress at the time amongst the Tojos of this world, although some of the prominent ones did share certain commo
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If the Axis had won you wouldn't be concerned with who was writing history -- you'd most likely be dead or never born, and the world would be an unimaginably horrifying place.
Good thing The Good Guys won or else there would be horrible things happening to innocent people every day!
cool (Score:2)
I'm glad it has a laser signature to help find it.
Heaven forbid, I assume this is another nightmare weapon made for a world overcrowded with weapons and nobody with a clue about what to do with them.
Surely LHM made this as a hide-and-seek companion for busy couples with lonely kids.
I know it doesn't fit into LHM's business model, but can't somebody stop this insanity and spend 1/10^6 as much money on figuring out how to prevent conflict?
"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure", goes the old saying,
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I've been intending to get into robotics for some time and I was considering such a thing as a mindstorms project - a kind of automatic toddler tormentor. Of course it could never compare to the natural version - also known as the mark one sibling.
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Laser scanners covertly map? (Score:4, Interesting)
Just how hard would it be to detect anything using a laser scanner to map its surroundings?
While potentially useful against unaware civilians, use in a combat situations or as a tool for covert operations would probably be easily thwarted by existing technology, using a standard digital camera (even a cell phone) to check for IR lasers (the most common non-eye visible lasers). There is nothing particularly covert about lasers.
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if it had an optical camera on it, the technology has existed for a long time to map out everything in 3d in the time it takes to shoot and process 2 frames.
hell, LHM could just hack a Kinect into it.
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Haha. No. If this were true, why would we have laser scanners? As I understand it, the parallax effect is only true for a single point focused on by both lens of two optical cameras. Everything else is just an approximation. And parallax must have some big limitations, or we would use it in favor of lasers.
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hell, LHM could just hack a Kinect into it.
You do know that Kinect blasts out a bright pattern of IR light to do it's depth mapping right?
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Fairly damn easy.
A neat trick to thwart so called night vision security cameras is IR LEDS in a baseball cap. It makes you appear with a big bright ball of light hanging around in front of your face.
If the building has good outside coverage with these types of security cameras (and they are common) it does not take a hugely sophisticated software program to detect these kinds of aberrations.
Granted these are lasers, but that only limits the exposure time of a security camera or sensor to the laser, and it
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Yes, "unaware civilians" is the main US enemy, domestically and, according to body counts, abroad.
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The navigation is covert. It is looking to minimize the chances of being spotted by (presumably) looking for shadows, going under tables, avoiding people and whatnot. Mapping is not even mentioned in the system's factsheet.
Personally I doubt that someone would be actively looking for lasers or have laser detection systems installed in a combat, hostage or other similar situation. In any case vision-based mapping is also possible, so I guess they either wanted to minimize processing requirements or it was ju
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I'm not talking about taking a picture.
Just pick up your cell phone and turn on the camera and view the screen. Have someone trigger a TV remote control however briefly across the room or two blocks away. You will see it without the need to take a pic
Important Message from Kremlen (Score:5, Funny)
In Soviet Russia robots hide from YOU!
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No, no,no
YOU hide from robot.
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In Soviet Russia robots hide from YOU!
In Soviet Russia robots pretend to work like you. (Best way to pissadear)
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In Soviet USA robots are sent on you.
In Soviet Russia, you were sent on robot.
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FYI, it's spelled Kremlin
FYI not with my accent..
Ssssssss (Score:1)
Now all they need to do is paint it green and make it blow up when it gets close to one of its surveillance targets.
It's been done before (Score:5, Funny)
As if my insomnia wasn't bad enough already (Score:2)
Re:As if my insomnia wasn't bad enough already (Score:4, Funny)
WALL-E was kinda cool, you know what's not cool? When he sneaks into your house in the middle of the night, neutralizes your dog and family members, then fulfill's your bittersweet fantasies of a robot style apocalypse!
STALK-R?
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Wait... bittersweet robocalypse? What's the good part?
Secondly.. the robot can sneak up on buildings, which last I checked, were not known for their agility. I'm pretty sure even the greenest new recruit can sneak up on a building...
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Just when you thought (Score:2, Funny)
... it was safe to jerk off
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Well at least it'll be able to warn you if it hears anyone approach.
Waiting (Score:1)
SKYNET says (Score:2)
TYVM meat.
As long as... (Score:1)
Are they blue and white... (Score:2)
... with a sort of round dome thing on the front? And little giggle voices?
silent, invisible, deadly... (Score:2)
The perfect pet for a NINJA!
Good guys? (Score:2)
Fight fire with fire (Score:3)
I don't know if there's a high-falutin' name for this strategy, but sometimes the best way to defend is to behave like an attacker. For example, if an opponent breaks through behind you in Rugby you run like his support player would in order to block his passing lanes.
In this situation you get your own robot that's programmed to sneak up on you in a similar way. If it doesn't find anything in one place it moves out, wanders around randomly and tries another route. Chances are it'll bump into the attacker at some point.
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Deja vu all over again (Score:1)
Laser detector (Score:2)
Hide from that.
Creates a business opportunity... (Score:2)
Then, of course, you send your battlebot out...
lollll...sounds like fun. I hope the g'ment/private industry go as nuts as they typically do trying to use these things.
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robot pride (Score:2)
Get Lost ! (Score:1)
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Obligatory reference (Score:1)
Shaken, not stirred (Score:2)
Good guys? (Score:2)
And send reconnaissance information back to the good guys
That's a rather large assumption about the motives of whoever is using these robots.
That so hard? (Score:1)
... their new covert robot that can sneak up on buildings...
Is that really so difficult? I surprise the hell out of buildings all the time. It's like they're never paying attention.
You can run but... (Score:2)
I didn't RTFA, but I did look at it. Did anyone see the screenshot of that robot? Who cares if it can tell you're coming. It's got 4 wheels, and couldn't hit a top speed with any amount of debris around it. Seeing as its lockheed, I'm willing to bet picking up one of those just net you a cool 100 million dollars.
Not really that hidden. (Score:2)
I loved this line (Score:3)
Because buildings are just so tough to sneak up on.
Robot Overlords (Score:2)
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Two (Score:2)
Re:I for one (Score:5, Funny)
...that can sneak up on buildings...
Those buildings are so dang hard to sneak up on, but they sure let out quit a yelp when you surprise them!
Re:I for one (Score:5, Funny)
... welcome our new hidden overlords
I was paranoid before I RTFA now I'm bat shit insane! The tin foil just isn't gonna cut it now.
I wonder if I can modify my tiger repelling rock to repel tiny robot overlords?
Anyone got a firmware update? The last one I Installed was 2.45b which seems slightly buggy and didn't mention anything about robots.
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Slightly buggy tiger-repelling rock?
"Three tigers today, thankfully rock working enough to keep the rest away"
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So.. the tiger repelling rock is as good at repelling tigers as the stimulus was at repelling unemployment?
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The stimulus wasn't about creating jobs. Its purpose was to [tick ONE box]
[ ] Give all your money to bankers | the Jews | China
[ ] Make homosexuality compulsory
[ ] Institute communism
[ ] Immunize the escutcheon
[ ] Other (please specify)
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Yours in teabaggery,
Kilgore Trout.
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"Immunize the escutcheon"? Why would anyone want to prevent a coat of arms from getting diseases?
Perhaps you mean "Immanentize the eschaton [wikipedia.org]", which means to hasten the end of the world (literally or figuratively). You probably heard it from someone who read The Illuminatus! Trilogy [wikia.com].
fnord
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Oh c'mon, the good news is they're easily thwarted. Just yell in a loud voice 'Olly Olly Oxen Free', and the tiny robot overlord will come out of hiding.
Yes but that puts them into Berserker mode. You never want to see a hoard of tiny Berserk robots let me tell you! or maybe I shouldn't?