[HN Gopher] Scientists are teaching drones to hunt down human sc...
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Scientists are teaching drones to hunt down human screams
Author : zdw
Score : 52 points
Date : 2021-06-18 19:02 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| pixel_tracing wrote:
| Breaking News: Couple threatens lawsuit against city for drone
| that lit up bedroom with high intensity flash beams during wild
| BDSM sexcapade
| sergiomattei wrote:
| Motels are going to have a hard time with this one.
| NemuriBaku wrote:
| If you're terrified of drones, that's an interesting feedback
| loop.
| mirkules wrote:
| I don't see any way this could go wrong.
|
| But in all seriousness, would this replace or augment current IR
| detection of survivals in natural disasters? Searching from high
| up might not be the most ideal position to search from - this
| could work well outfitted on a rover. In fact, I would love to
| see a tiny little rover that can crawl into spaces and search for
| survivors, sounds and body heat.
| toxik wrote:
| Wheels are not good for uneven terrain such as rubles and
| forests!
| dimatura wrote:
| Doesn't seem the most practical way to go about it, with drones
| being so noisy and all. It probably doesn't make sense for this
| to replace cameras (visible and IR), for all sorts of reasons.
| But I could see it being helpful as an extra input in some
| cases.
| schelling42 wrote:
| Sound has the advantage of going around corners though...
| bee_rider wrote:
| > I don't see any way this could go wrong.
|
| We asked to robots to maximize the number of screaming humans
| they found... it turns out that metric proved quite easy to
| game.
| [deleted]
| reedf1 wrote:
| The headline!
| klyrs wrote:
| Awesome. When the kids play outside, it's nonstop screaming. Now
| they'll have extra targets for their water/nerf guns
| setr wrote:
| It's a pretty distinctly different kind of scream though -- the
| same reason we don't currently get scared when we hear kids
| playing.
| klyrs wrote:
| Sure. I can tell when my kid's hurt over the din of the
| rabble... mostly. But sometimes nothing's actually wrong and
| it seems like a cry for attention and I run outside for
| nothing. Just takes one kid recognizing that screaming bloody
| murder summons the bots...
| handrous wrote:
| Excited-screaming, maybe. "My brother just threw my favorite
| toy in a mud-puddle" screaming? Nope, that sounds exactly
| like death or dismemberment is happening.
| tooltower wrote:
| Right, and there's no reason to worry about machines
| mistaking one kind of scream for another.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| The sub-headline:
|
| > Researchers developed a drone-carried acoustics system to find
| people calling out for help
|
| Quite a contrast!
| avocad wrote:
| That's a relief! If they teach them to replicate themselves,
| many more people could be rescued.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| But they might not be able to reach people who are hidden
| under the rubble of a collapsed building, for example.
| Ideally the drones would be built using nanotechnology,
| allowing them to be so small that they're almost invisible.
| Of course, coordinating their movements would require quite a
| powerful AI...
| vagrantJin wrote:
| Thank goodness.
|
| For second there I thought terminator was becoming real in my
| lifetime.
|
| Or that military drones may be equipped with this sort of tech
| to find civilians/soldiers then deliver an explosive payload
| just for kicks.
|
| Glad we are starting to use it for good. For now at least.
| swader999 wrote:
| I thought my wife was about to get swarmed.
| mhuffman wrote:
| >The sub-headline:
|
| The sub-sub-headline: Researchers develop military tech to hunt
| down targets that have only been wounded!
| elefanten wrote:
| Yup. And a great example of the clickbait dystopia we live in.
| Dishonesty reigns in the public sphere.
| excalibur wrote:
| Assuming the technology will not be used for nefarious
| purposes seems incredibly naive
| jwhitlark wrote:
| What's the nefarious use of finding someone who is already
| screaming?
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Suppression of dissent.
| grogenaut wrote:
| Isn't one of the hottest movies right now about monsters
| that kill anything that makes a noise?
| munk-a wrote:
| Locating winning lottery tickets?
| harimau777 wrote:
| Eliminating survivors
| Steltek wrote:
| There needs to be a name for comments that are so
| sociopathic and terrifying that I jump in my seat. HN
| seems to do this more than Reddit, which is also
| disturbing.
| dash2 wrote:
| More generally, listening and detecting human speech and
| intent has plenty of military uses, and they are the main
| buyers of drones. It seems quite common for technologists
| to come up with humanitarian justifications for what is
| really new military hardware.
| mycologos wrote:
| Not to pick on this comment too much, but people's quick
| trigger to label something "dystopia" contributes to this
| dishonesty. Editors write headlines like this for the same
| reason people like "dystopia" -- it's usually inaccurate, but
| it gets attention.
| infogulch wrote:
| It's interesting, the difference is only in the intent, the
| technology itself doesn't express any preference between
| these headlines.
| munk-a wrote:
| But, intent is everything. "Man forces widespread epidemic
| of cutting on society at large" vs. "Biden advocates for
| nationwide vaccination" are similarly not particularly
| distinct at a technical level but quite different
| headlines.
|
| Well, unless you're an anti-vaxer then I suppose they are
| identical in multiple ways.
| barbazoo wrote:
| What does "Man forces widespread epidemic of cutting on
| society at large" even mean?
| munk-a wrote:
| Man encourages people throughout society to be jabbed
| with pointy things?
|
| My two examples are meant to be alternative ways to
| describe the vaccine rollout but one with the intent
| removed and replaced with a sensationalized headline. You
| could describe getting vaccinated as being cut, it isn't
| entirely incorrect, it's just extremely misleading.
| ttt0 wrote:
| In case of technological progress, intent is nothing.
| javajosh wrote:
| The kindest thing I could say about the clickbait version
| is that it has the ring of a riddle. I'm sure I'm not the
| only one who took a moment to consider what it could
| _really_ mean. Although, that in-and-of-itself is making it
| effective at garnering attention, just via a different
| psychological route!
|
| That said, the verb phrase "hunt down" is an important part
| of the "color" that, if you were describing it to a
| computer you'd leave out.
| yellow_lead wrote:
| Useful for rescue operations and military err... applications.
| tootie wrote:
| Related existing tech is Shotspotter. Placed on rooftops in
| cities it can detect and triangulate the sound of gunfire. Picks
| up the occasional backfiring car though.
|
| https://www.shotspotter.com/
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Picks up the occasional backfiring car though.
|
| It picks up more than occasional backfires besides actual
| gunshots, which is connected to concerns about its use being a
| pretext for selective policing in minority communities (or even
| outright manufacturing evidence to support police narratives):
|
| ---
|
| https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolinehaskins1/police...
|
| ---
|
| "...a study of Chicago police data found that over a nearly
| 22-month period ending in mid-April, almost 90% of ShotSpotter
| alerts didn't result in officers reporting evidence of shots
| fired or of any gun crime." https://apnews.com/article/chicago-
| police-crime-shootings-be...
|
| ---
|
| https://www.kpbs.org/news/2019/jun/19/pros-and-cons-gunshot-...
| (The series of "ifs" used in the police lieutenant's defense of
| the value of the system is...quite impressive.)
|
| ---
|
| Simmons was accused of firing the first shot and charged with
| the attempted murder of a police officer, among other offences.
| Recordings by ShotSpotter were used against Simmons at trial,
| but evidence surfaced that the service had initially
| categorized loud noises in his neighborhood as the sound of a
| helicopter overhead -- until Rochester police notified the
| service that an officer-involved shooting had taken place.
| ShotSpotter would then change the number of gunshots that it
| had reportedly detected from three shots to four shots, and
| then five shots.
|
| After spending 18 months in jail and eventually being cleared
| of attempted aggravated murder, aggravated assault of a police
| officer, and two counts of criminal possession of a weapon in
| the second degree, Simmons is now suing the city of Rochester,
| two police officers, a former police chief, and ShotSpotter.
| Matters were complicated when Paul Greene, the Forensic
| Services Manager of ShotSpotter, admitted in court that the
| audio file from the time of Simmons' shooting was gone. Greene
| also admitted that unlocked or unencrypted ShotSpotter audio
| files can be altered by ShotSpotter employees or police.
|
| https://www.codastory.com/authoritarian-tech/gun-violence-po...
| jfultz wrote:
| The television show Person of Interest had an episode that
| featured a technology called "ShotSeeker" that was modeled
| after ShotSpotter. In the storyline, ShotSeeker is paired with
| human oversight to help distinguish real gunfire from other
| sounds. However, the police develop such high confidence in the
| results that the program is co-opted to both hide real crimes
| (by declaring actual gunshots fake) and to set up an attempted
| murder by effectively "swatting" one of the characters.
|
| https://personofinterest.fandom.com/wiki/ShotSeeker
| rapnie wrote:
| There's this cool application of using old smartphones to
| locate chainsaws in the rainforest indicative of illegal
| logging.
|
| https://www.livingcircular.veolia.com/en/eco-citizen/topher-...
| Judgmentality wrote:
| > Picks up the occasional backfiring car though.
|
| Never really used it, but from what I've heard (which is just
| comments on the internet) it's unreliable enough that it's not
| particularly useful.
| btilly wrote:
| Actually it is extremely useful. However it won't work as
| well if you use a silencer. (Which are better named
| suppressors, the gun is still quite loud but won't be doing
| as much damage to your hearing.) As in, we can make it work.
| But making it sensitive enough to catch quieted guns inside
| of houses will also make it sensitive enough to generate a
| ton of false positives.
|
| This is one of the main reasons why there is a debate about
| the use of silencers. And people who want to be able to use
| silencers have an agenda to make the technology seem less
| useful than it is.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _it 's unreliable enough that it's not particularly
| useful._
|
| Any machine or black box that law enforcement can use either
| as pretext for doing whatever they want, or as something to
| point to to absolve themselves of responsibility, has value.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Any machine or black box that law enforcement can use
| either as pretext for doing whatever they want, or as
| something to point to to absolve themselves of
| responsibility, has value.
|
| I think you left out "negative social" before the last word
| there.
| munk-a wrote:
| Do you work in law enforcement? This sort of tech seems
| particularly useful to move units in to respond to in
| progress shootings especially to reinforce and pinpoint the
| source of distress for 911 calls.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Some law enforcement seems to love it, though others have
| rejected it (some after using it for a while) because of
| cost, studies of its low reliability (particularly, high
| false positives), low benefit because actual gunshots tend
| to get as much information from 911 calls as Shotspotter
| provides, and community relations concerns.
| sschueller wrote:
| Is there any open source project like this? Locate a sounds
| direction using multiple microphones?
| dghughes wrote:
| How many goats will it find. Ever hear a goat "scream"? Very
| human-like.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Sheep more than goats, and more like a belligerent drunkard
| than somebody in distress...
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y07TDTFSSMQ
| grp000 wrote:
| They sound like Serious Sam bomb guys.
| slipframe wrote:
| Mountain lions too, which sound disturbingly like women
| screaming for their life.
| avocad wrote:
| In the morning to you too!
| slumdev wrote:
| Sounds like the working title of a Harlan Ellison short.
| ralmidani wrote:
| Or a ripoff of PKD's "Second Variety".
| teddyh wrote:
| Available here: https://web.archive.org/web/20150419140249/ht
| tp://american-b...
| loopback_device wrote:
| All-Access Digital EUR5 every 4 weeks or just EUR50 EUR20 for the
| first year
| donw wrote:
| Inexplicably, when launched, the drones immediately set off on a
| direct heading to the closest JIRA user.
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(page generated 2021-06-18 23:02 UTC)