A Use Of Drones Nearly Everyone Will Like

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130213/12295221966/heres-use-drones-nearly-everyone-will-like.shtml

by nickcobb • 13 years ago

28 35 13 years ago

newishuser2• 13 years ago

I wonder how long it will be until a specific anti-drone gun is invented. Seems like there will be a strong market for one soon.

fnordfnordfnord5• 13 years ago

GPS attack, broadcast bogus GPS signals to it. Make it fly itself into the ground, or just stall out and crash.

paganel• 13 years ago

And then you'll be labeled as being a "terrorist". I wish I was kidding but I'm afraid that's where the US is heading.

icegreentea2• 13 years ago

Oky, so I've actually had a really hard time finding out what type of drones they're using. What I did get is this report - with some pictures and stats: http://www.iapf.org/images/documents/niassa.pdf

Perhaps someone else can identify it, but from it's specs, it looks like it can probably fly reasonably high... if it can manage 6-8 hours at 400km range, it looks like it kind of slots in somewhat below http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ScanEagle in terms of performance (and cost).

From that guess, I'm thinking that this sucker is flying well over a mile high, which makes most gun approaches (unless they brought in a whole anti-aircraft platform...) pretty unfeasible. In any case, the cost of shooting down one of these would be pretty high - you would almost certainly need a weapon with guidance somehow (ie, a missile, which is going to really cut into your profit margins), extreme luck and patience, or lug around anti-aircraft platforms... which might not actually be out of the picture.

One of the things this article doesn't really tap into is how the nature of the poachers themselves are changing. The poachers themselves are becoming more militarized (as are the wardens now), partly due to the hilarious amounts of money poaching generates - it apparently, they represent a significant revenue stream for various African Paramilitary groups. http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/rhino-horn-crisis-and-the-d...

In any case, like most illict trades, constraining the supply rarely makes the problem go away - you gotta shutdown the demand somehow.

apawloski2• 13 years ago

Wow, that's the first time I've ever seen that figure (for rhino horn). We were doing programs for totally different animals, and presumably different markets, but the magnitude of that number is completely contrary to our experience. Only further evidence that one-size-fits-all solutions are not always as generalized as they might seem.

Someone• 13 years ago

I would not use a rocket. If you can see or hear that drone, you can fly your own drone into it, or have it explode nearby it. Such a attacker drone would not need 20 hours endurance, so it would be a lot cheaper.

That "If you can see or hear that drone" probably is where the problem lies, but that might be solved by having your drone listen for the distinctive hum of the drone's engines. That way, you don't have to be able to continuously see that drone from the ground. Just launch your own drone; if it hears another drone, it will home in on it.

Alternatively, I would try jamming the drone's signals or taking over its controls.

fnordfnordfnord5• 13 years ago

I hate hate hate the idea of the use of drones by police fishing for crimes to prosecute. OTOH, I agree with the sentiment of the article on the notion that drones are simply a new (as in newly economical) technology, and neither good nor bad. One of my favorite ideas for drones is scouting for forest fires during drought. Finding a forest fire before it becomes too large to fight could save lives and property.

lifeisstillgood6• 13 years ago

>> Fishing for crimes to prosecute

Err, if its a crime its a crime. Upping the detection rate is not a bad thing in itself - it merely hastens the day when we reduce the number of crimes because if we prosecute we manage to bang up 20% of the population.

(See the US approach to mandatory drug sentences for a tired example)

fnordfnordfnord5• 13 years ago

I would argue that upping the detection rate is a bad thing, given the current status quo of the relationship people have with government. Our system relies upon investing some amount of trust in individuals (law enforcement agents, prosecutors, jurors, etc.) to ensure that laws are enforced fairly, by applying them selectively (or at least that's the ideal case). As for hastening "the day we reduce the number of crimes because if we prosecute we manage to bang up 20% of the population." I'd expect that number to be nearer to 99%, and, it can't happen soon enough as far as I am concerned.

markkanof• 13 years ago

So are you saying that it would cause our society to no longer classify certain activities as crimes? If so, then I agree that sounds like a good direction to head, but am not sure that things that are currently crimes will actually be reclassified as not crimes. Especially if it generates revenue for the government through ticketing I can't imagine those going away.

It is a real problem though, because I think many laws only exist so that law enforcement can take action with regard to extreme cases (ie. when they are alerted to an egregious enough example that they have to take action). If we have robots constantly watching us, it will drastically change that dynamic, and I think many of us could be getting ticketed all the time for things that are technically legal violations, but don't actually hurt anyone (the reason why laws exist in the first place) unless taken to the extreme.

MrQuincle2• 13 years ago

Exactly my idea! Please, feel free to come up with other humane use case scenarios, because it is regretfully very easy for people to come up with ones for the police, border patrol, the army, drugs crime fighting, etc. etc. Technologies like this are inevitable, but it is essential that we reach a critical mass early with respect to the positive side of technology. To create nuclear reactors and engines, before we create the bombs.

apawloski2• 13 years ago

My freshman and sophomore years in college, I worked in the big cat house at a fairly prestigious zoo in the US (mostly feeding them and cleaning up their shit). But in addition to the cats we took care of, we had many programs around the world to protect animals from poachers and environmental encroachment. In almost every poaching context, the most successful experiments were always the simplest:

Pay the poachers to be rangers instead.

We found that the primary motivation for poachers was profit, so we approached them and essentially said "We'll pay you more if you protect the cats instead of hunting them." The 180s we observed were remarkable, and the money they made from poaching was usually so small that beating it was almost trivial for us. So while the price of drones (and program maintenance) are decreasing, I can't help but wonder how many ranger salaries could have been paid instead.

_djo_4• 13 years ago

That approach has been tried and although there's limited success it's not workable for rhino poaching. The huge amount of money being made by criminal syndicates means that the people doing the poaching are being paid far, far more than the state could ever afford to compete with while the extra money means the poaching operations are more sophisticated with their own helicopters and pilots, paid-off veterinarians and other high-skilled and well-paid people.

Nonetheless there's a large reward incentive offered in South Africa and neighbouring countries for information leading to the arrest of a poacher or the head of a poaching syndicate, amounting to $10 000 for the former and $100 000 for the latter. It's too early to say how well it's working, but it is being supplemented by military patrols, drone and aircraft operations and sophisticated sensors and early indications are promising.

lifeisstillgood6• 13 years ago

Seriously?

How much does Rhino Horn go for?

And, since its matted hair, and since it does not actually increase male virility when mixed with water, why do the criminial syndicates not just stop poaching and hand out ground up hair. I mean, they are criminials. Its not like they are opposed to lying.

Edit: 60-80K/kilo it seems - in bitcoins.

schabernakk• 13 years ago

I am really looking forward ordering a pizza and getting them delivered by a drone 15 minutes later.

As soon as this happens (5 years? 8 years?) I am pretty sure there will also be a service like silk road using drones and bitcoin as payment to deliver drugs (and probably everything else) to your doorstep a few minutes after ordering it.

newishuser2• 13 years ago

Seems like a really easy way to loose a drone.

Giszmo• 13 years ago

Oh great! ;) So I can order a pizza to my GPS coordinates paid with bitcoin from my Android on the beach? That's cool!

Only problem with an anonymous order (hey, of course it should be anonymous!) is that people might want to take the drone instead of the pizza so maybe they will have to parachute the pizza from some altitude :) … oh I love this idea :)

… ok so maybe the drone would not operate 100% automated and the pilot would drop the pizza only some meters away from any person that might want to snatch the drone?

forgotAgain• 13 years ago

It's not about drones per se. It's about giving untrustworthy governments such a powerful tool to oppress.

_djo_4• 13 years ago

Both South Africa and Kenya already operate military drones, in South Africa's case dating back to the mid-1980s. The idea that a tiny number of cheap low-endurance crowd-funded drones will increase government oppression or that these governments can't already get better drones is poorly thought-through.

Plus, neither South Africa nor Kenya can be considered 'oppressive' governments.

lifeisstillgood6• 13 years ago

Governments have repressed with swords and spears for far longer than we care to remember.

Communication tools have so far managed to undo repression more than enable it. Hopefully the trend will continue.

_djo_4• 13 years ago

Unfortunately while this helps it's not a panacea. I wrote a previous comment on HN [1] on the same subject, which I'll paste here as the points still apply:

This is welcome from Google, as focused aid of this sort can often have an outsize effect, but we must be careful to avoid believing this can solve the problem.

For one, sophisticated UAVs that are much more capable than those the WWF is getting are already being used to combat rhino poaching. SANParks, the state agency responsible for South Africa's state-run national parks, has deployed the Seeker II military-spec UAV[0], ground radar, thermal imagers, cameras and dedicated teams of heavily armed rangers in the Kruger National Park, one of Africa's largest wildlife reserves. All anti-poaching resources have been placed under the command of Major General Johan Jooste, a highly-regarded retired military commander and a rewards program giving approximately US$ 10 000 to anybody whose tip-off results in the arrest of a poacher and about US$ 100 000 for a tip-off leading to the arrest of the head of a poaching syndicate has been created. At the same time the South African Army has deployed units in both the border patrol and anti-poaching role in certain parks.

These measures are all helping, but it's important to understand just what an impossible task this is. SANParks's 19 national parks alone cover 37 000 km², that's larger than Belgium, Israel and Lebanon. Moreover those 19 parks are dispersed across South Africa's 1.2 million km² and many of them are on the border of neighbouring countries from which many of these poachers come. It also doesn't include the hundreds of private wildlife reserves across the country which have been badly hit by rhino poaching. As the US has discovered on its southern border with Mexico, trying to prevent small bands of people from crossing a border this large is impossible even with UAVs, manned aircraft and massive resources.

So technology alone is not going to solve this, though it and other measures are hopefully going to help reduce the rate at which rhinos are being killed. The only long-term solution is to somehow stop the demand for rhino horn from Asia and thus remove the profit motive for poaching rhinos in the first place.

[0] The Seeker II is a 9-12 hour endurance UAV with all the standard surveillance gear such as FLIR cameras that is being provided free of charge by Denel, a South African arms manufacturer. The intention is to supplement that with a longer-ranged model, the Seeker 400, sometime next year. At the same time they're finalising development of a much smaller UAV, the Hungwe, that can be deployed by ranger teams for short-range surveillance.

[1]http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4936947

lifeisstillgood6• 13 years ago

Interesting - replace "rhino horn" with "cocaine" or "heroin" and you have the editorial page of the Economist.

Supply and demand rule it seems.

MrQuincle2• 13 years ago

If I am correct, this is a law enforcement task, so it is again police work. I think there are better uses of drones for now, for which reason our company created some ethical guidelines: http://www.dobots.nl/ethical-policy. One of our statements is "Helping, not harming!". It is better to first develop technologies where we can help people, and consider them as victims, rather than searching for scenarios where we can identify perpetrators. The suggestion in the article is to destroy the vehicles of the poachers, but where does it stop... There are so many situations where we can help. People that drown at sea, early detection of forest fires, environmental monitoring, crowdsourcing journalism, etc.

PS: I am the PI of the Dutch http://www.fireswarm.nl project in which a group of companies and universities use drones to detect a fire as quick as possible.

A Use Of Drones Nearly Everyone Will Like

Related Stories