[HN Gopher] High-Speed AI Drone Overtakes World-Champion Drone R...
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High-Speed AI Drone Overtakes World-Champion Drone Racers
Author : geox
Score : 135 points
Date : 2023-08-30 15:40 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.news.uzh.ch)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.news.uzh.ch)
| yreg wrote:
| > This marks the first time that an autonomous mobile robot has
| achieved world champion level performance in a real world
| competitive sport.
|
| Interesting, is that true? I would have expected that to have
| happened in some other sports already (especially racing).
| johndhi wrote:
| Cool story
| Oarch wrote:
| "Real-world applications include environmental monitoring or
| disaster response."
|
| Reminds me of: https://xkcd.com/2128/
| [deleted]
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| "If you are not currently experiencing a disaster, please
| remain on the line and one will be created in your immediate
| vicinity as soon as possible."
| taeric wrote:
| Oddly, I would think the "limitation" of only using the onboard
| system for control is an advantage? In that not having the
| latency of transmission back to a controller has to be
| measurable?
|
| I probably have very bad intuitions on how long it takes to
| transmit video and such?
| upbeat_general wrote:
| I'm not familiar with the specifics latencies for drone racing
| but hierarchical planning/control is very very common in
| robotics.
|
| It's natural to say plan a longer term trajectory at 1Hz, a
| short-term trajectory at 10Hz, and perform control at the
| 100Hz, obviously with those rates varying based on the system.
|
| And since (generally speaking) higher levels of planning
| require more compute resources, it might make sense to
| partition the compute and take the latency penalty.
| taeric wrote:
| Makes sense in general. In the specific case of these racers,
| it seems you wouldn't be losing out on much by keeping
| everything local, though?
|
| That said, I'm still mostly curious on how long it would take
| you to get the sensory data off the drone. My gut is that the
| video transmission done would blow through most of the time
| budgets you listed. I'd love to see a good rundown on the
| relevant latency values involved.
| bri3d wrote:
| Good high-resolution specialized video-codec based (H.264 /
| H.265) digital FPV video systems like Walksnail or DJI
| hover at around 30ms of latency glass-to-glass.
|
| Analog systems used in racing are at around 15ms glass-to-
| glass, with most latency coming from the camera's image
| processing, but would be a bit non-standard to train or
| build a system around without transforming back into the
| framebuffer/pixel-value domain, which would introduce some
| slight degree of extra latency.
|
| There's a rather unique uncompressed transmission system
| called HDZero which roughly matches analog latency.
|
| Purpose-built low latency uplinks add 5-10ms to get data
| turned around and back into the flight controller, albeit
| at fairly low bitrates as they're mostly serial based.
|
| So, for realtime control (kinematics), which runs at the
| multi-kHz rate on racing drones, onboard control is pretty
| much a must, but for both short-term and long-term
| planning, offboard control becomes more practical.
|
| Most non-FPV drones are already architected this way, with
| gyro-to-motor PID control performed on a microcontroller
| running an RTOS, short-term planning information coming in
| asynchronously from a larger SoC running Linux and ML-type
| stuff, and long-term control information coming down over
| the air.
| taeric wrote:
| Thanks! This is really cool stuff. I'll start digging
| online looking at some of this stuff. Curious what the
| resolution constraints are for this video. I'm assuming
| for cinema purposes, they have separate control video to
| keep things fast?
|
| And I now have to convince myself that i don't, in fact,
| need to physically play with one of these things. :D
| supergeek wrote:
| Exciting! I do a lot of FPV drone racing and it always felt ripe
| for an AI control to take over. Because the video system is so
| low quality the course is intentionally very high contrast and
| almost perfect for a vision system. Along with the relatively
| limited and constant inputs available.
|
| I will say, flying indoors on a relatively simple track like
| theirs is a lot easier than flying outdoors on more real world
| tracks.
|
| It's a bummer that they didn't fly the standardized 2023 multiGP
| global qualifier track. Then we could rank their AI against every
| pilot more objectively. You can see that track design here:
| https://www.multigp.com/global-qualifier/
| jacquesm wrote:
| It may well be because it simply can't complete that track yet.
| As soon as it can complete it at all it will probably be near
| the top performers. But if the situation changes considerably
| from the training conditions I would still expect it to fail,
| as well as with relatively minor (but unexpected) changes to
| the track.
| bri3d wrote:
| I think that the idea of using the residual model (trained on
| high-resolution outside-in pose estimation) to correct the
| inside-out model is particularly interesting because it might
| actually be possible to generalize; if the kinematics
| residuals (basically the delta between simulation training
| and the real world aerodynamic + inertial behavior of the
| aircraft) are able to be made general enough to reflect the
| flight dynamics of the drone, rather than the specific
| actions on a specific course, this is a promising approach
| for general purpose flight.
|
| It's a really fascinating approach compared to most "AI-
| guided" drones which use models for vision and pathfinding
| but a traditional IMU+PID loop for kinematic control.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It reminds me of the way the Mario Brothers game changed
| overnight: for the longest time it was considered
| impossible and then suddenly it was unbeatable. But both
| benefit from the static course, _if_ it generalizes it will
| be a game changer, otherwise, I 'm not that impressed. But
| there may well be some gold to be found here and I applaud
| them for making it work this far. Maybe they could
| purposefully improve their performance in real world
| situations by making this one harder, for instance by
| changing the lighting from one run to another, introducing
| or removing obstacles or moving goals around. That might
| force the model to come out more general. We've seen
| similar strategies used with good results in image
| classification problems. In fact I used them myself when
| building the lego sorter, as long as everything was always
| lined up perfect it worked a lot worse then when
| introducing various complications. During the real world
| runs those would show up all by themselves anyway and where
| before they were classified wrong or ended up in the
| recycling bin for another shot they were suddenly
| classified right.
|
| Of course a setup where you can gather your training data
| with thousands of images per hour has some advantages over
| one where if you get it wrong you have to rebuild your
| drone...
| supergeek wrote:
| A changing course is one of the biggest impacts of flying
| outside. You have the wind directly acting on your drone,
| and you have the wind acting on the gates and flags.
| Flags will spin around in the wind, double gates will
| lean, sometimes quite a lot in the wind.
|
| There's a whole skill to feeling the wind on your body
| and anticipating how the drone will behave. When I feel a
| big gust of wind I'm going to slow down out on the course
| to get my bearings.
| htrp wrote:
| How much do human drone racers memorize the individual
| standardized track layouts vs reacting on the fly?
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| Navigating between gates is usually done by flying what you
| can see and reacting real-time to conditions.
|
| When you get to a gate, or perform a turn or a split-s, these
| manoeuvres can be executed faster than you can see and
| process so Instead you go faster than your brain by
| memorising the timing of your inputs and execute them from
| memory rather than flying what you can see.
|
| For example, if i want to do a barrel roll, i don't watch the
| horizon. Instead i rely on my memory of how fast it rotates
| at full stick deflection.
|
| Sometimes these set pieces go wrong - you clip a gate for
| example - it's usually my hearing processes that a fraction
| of a second before my vision does.
|
| It's quite common to fly without vision for short periods,
| the analogue video feed is not reliable.
| bri3d wrote:
| I'd say it's a combination of both. Just like in auto racing,
| some people are really good at flying "seat of the pants" or
| "reading the course" and adapting to a new layout gate-to-
| gate, while other pilots are better at a course with practice
| and memorization. At the top, it's about both together. Most
| races are conducted with analog video at a very low output
| power to reduce interference between racers, so the visuals
| are pretty weak and most pilots do rely on a fair amount of
| memorization. But, there's also a not-inconsequential
| conditions angle that comes in when flying outside, so pilots
| need to be adaptable.
|
| In terms of "fairness" to the computer, I think this approach
| isn't up to snuff with a human pilot until it can fly an
| outdoor course in changing conditions. Still, I find this
| particular approach very interesting since it's inside-out
| (self-contained) flying once it's trained, with guided
| learning to start. I found the earlier purely outside-in
| guidance approaches to be rather ho-hum as they weren't very
| practical and basically skipped the "hard parts."
| MR4D wrote:
| I give this a year until we see it in Ukraine. Tools like this
| will change warfare even more than the last 18 months have.
| koheripbal wrote:
| See what exactly? We already see drones.
| partiallypro wrote:
| I suppose they mean you won't need a drone pilot, which takes
| training and takes a soldier off the battlefield in terms of
| them needing to have on a headset and can't fire a
| conventional weapon at the same time. I don't think it will
| come to the war so quickly though, it's the least of the
| problems at the moment for Ukraine that badly needs long
| range missiles, mine clearing equipment and F16s.
| bodangly wrote:
| I am a consultant who developed the companion computer/autopilot
| and software environment for DRL drones used at the AIRR race
| sponsored by Lockheed in 2019. UZH was the team to beat and I met
| Davide and Elia there. They almost pulled it off but sports being
| what they are had a bit of a heartbreak at the end, and the team
| from Delft ended up pulling through and winning the $1mm prize.
| Delft then raced against Gab from DRL and iirc came behind by
| only 6 seconds.
|
| So glad to see this team from UZH continued pushing the envelope
| and are now beating human champions. If you saw the team and what
| they managed in under a year, it was clear they were highly
| talented and human racers had their work cut out for them to stay
| ahead.
| mnadkvlb wrote:
| Reminds of me of my time 7 years back when i took the robotics
| courses from Davide. What a legendary professor alongwith
| Bernstein for AI, Sven for Computational-Econ and Boehlen for
| DBs.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Is 6 seconds not a huge margin in drone racing?
| bodangly wrote:
| It is, yes, but also this was done purely by VIO - courses
| were not mapped ahead of time. Contestants had very limited
| time on the actual drone, almost all their work had to be
| done via HITL simulation. The entire stack was done in maybe
| 6-8 months, then contestants produced their first code for
| the drone in a couple more months, and were flying shortly
| after. It was very clear that given more time, 6 seconds was
| going to be surpassed very quickly. All of this was live
| events too - contestants were tweaking code up until cameras
| rolled and spectators were in the stands.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Funny to see you talking about engineers, teams (humans) ... it
| was the AI that won.
|
| I suppose soon enough though it will "teams of AI" developing
| the winning AI pilots. :-(
| dbtc wrote:
| It sounds like you might have a case of the 'ai-ai-ai!'s
|
| Take a deep breath, step outside, look around and remind
| yourself: I am human and still top-dog on this planet.
|
| It's going to be alright. Don't forget to smile for the
| cameras.
|
| [This message was generated by AI.]
| datahead wrote:
| What is the general outline of going from a model of a craft
| (drone, sailboat, etc) to building a sim that can do
| reinforcement learning over a physical object interaction with
| its env?
|
| I want to start playing with models, sims and collected data
| for sailboat racing- I know the RL/data science stuff, and I
| assume a good model of your craft takes time to build, and can
| be improved with collected data. What are some areas to explore
| when chaining model -> sim -> RL for performance?
|
| I realize this is an extremely complex topic, with several PhDs
| worth of potential input- if you had to explain to someone
| technical what it looks like and where to keep digging, what
| would you say?
| munificent wrote:
| I don't have any expertise in this field, but I expect
| sailboat training simulations would be much harder than
| aerial drones because of the underlying physics involved.
|
| I'm sure flight simulations have to deal with some amount of
| fluid mechanics and turbulence to get an accurate simulation,
| but I suspect it's fairly simple and you can mostly model it
| accurately enough using Newtonian physics.
|
| But for sailboats, the entire system relies profoundly on the
| interaction of two separate fluids with a single body and
| turbulence and viscosity are deeply interwined in making the
| boat go. Not to mention that the sail itself is a flexible
| deformable surface.
|
| Seems like an absolute simulation nightmare.
| talldatethrow wrote:
| As a sailor, you're giving sailors a bit too much credit.
| Those things all matter, but to say that the average sail
| boat racer is even optimizing for all those things
| efficiently at once is a huge stretch. A lot of sail boat
| racing is strategy and properly performing the basically in
| a hostile environment. If you could ensure great strategy
| based on learned data, and immaculate execution based on
| properly tuned controls, I think you'd win easily.
| ioseph wrote:
| Agree, I imagine just maxing VMG on the fly as conditions
| change is something a computer could already outperform
| humans easily.
|
| I've wanted to make a simple sailing game for a while now
| but found it very hard to actually get something that
| feels right and compared to other activities there
| doesn't seem to be great resources on all the different
| parts of the physical system (in terms of Math).
| OnlineGladiator wrote:
| I don't think GP is saying that sailors take all of those
| effects into account constantly, so much as he's saying a
| useful simulation would be monstrously difficult due to
| the underlying physics.
|
| I've made robot models in the past, but never for
| anyhting involving water (although I actually have done
| physics simulations with water but nothing with robots).
| I don't know anything about sailing and I'm definitely
| not an expert at building simulations, but I can grok
| what GP meant and I agree with his assessment.
|
| To give a very rough analogy - it would be like trying to
| learn how to be a racecar driver on a videogame with
| simplified physics. There are professional drivers that
| use simulators and iRacing (or Assetto Corsa or a handful
| of other games) but none of them are training on Need for
| Speed, and it's because the difference is so stark you're
| actually handicapping yourself instead of learning how to
| drive. You need the simulation to be close enough to
| reality before it starts to become useful.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| great milestone achieved, that's quite a leap for the field, from
| being half as good as the best human pilots to winning by half a
| second
|
| I would definitely like to see the drones outfitted with
| different sensors that aren't so sensitive to light visible to
| humans
| i_am_jl wrote:
| Oh, we've already arrived at Slaughterbots.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-2tpwW0kmU
| morkalork wrote:
| The only thing they missed on is that POV footage from the
| drones would get published online and people would makes memes
| out of it.
| 01100011 wrote:
| Still need to solve the power problem. When drones can fly for
| 8+ hours straight or charge themselves using the electrical
| infrastructure then I'll worry about "Stabby the Robot".
|
| AI isn't really the limiting factor as far as I can tell. We
| have good enough pattern recognition and flight software
| already.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| There are much higher density energy sources than lithium
| batteries which militaries can use, I'm not sure that is at
| all insurmountable. In other words, time to worry :)
| https://newatlas.com/nuclear-uav/22041/
| bunabhucan wrote:
| Stabby could be sent to wait on the ground until the
| microphone detects footsteps.
| jsight wrote:
| In a warzone, AI is a big factor. GPS and control signal
| jamming have proven to be somewhat effective countermeasures.
|
| But what happens when the drone is navigating with a camera
| and selecting its own target based upon training?
| cheald wrote:
| Dazzle camo and decoys seem like the obvious answer, and
| anything flying is still gonna have to contend with AA
| weapons platforms. It doesn't seem like it would be the
| hardest problem in the world to honeypot an autonomous
| drone into a kill box.
| jsight wrote:
| Those sound like captchas for drones to me. We've already
| started to see that bots can defeat some of those better
| than humans can.
|
| Decoys are likely the best answer, but not necessarily
| practical for offensive operations. And given the low
| cost of drones, likely limited in usefulness anyway.
| 01100011 wrote:
| I'm not worried about battlefields in the "stabby the
| robot" scenario. I'm worried about unprepared civilians
| being exsanguinated en masse by a fleet of drones.
|
| The scary scenario as far as I'm concerned, is mass
| genocide based on some characteristic. 10k drones wiping
| out 100k civilians who are identifiable based on location,
| skin color, clothing or some other measure. It's a scenario
| that has seemed vaguely plausible to me for several years
| now.
|
| I refer to it as "stabby the robot" because drones wielding
| blades or other means of exsanguination do not run out of
| ammo and have little limitations on how much they can
| achieve their goals(other than powering themselves).
| jsight wrote:
| Exactly, and imagine them in the hands of terrorists.
| Some pretty awful outcomes are becoming possible.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| Use another AI system to strobe a laser at the cameras of
| all the drones in the area and see if you can overwhelm
| their optics.
| jsight wrote:
| If you can accurately strobe it with a laser, why not use
| the same targeting system to shoot it down? But good
| systems like that with sufficient capacity won't be
| cheap. And they'd be prime targets for artillery during
| an offensive operation.
|
| Then again, from watching the publicly available videos,
| it seems like these drones have been most useful for
| defensive operations on the battlefield.
| IshKebab wrote:
| No no, didn't you read the article?
|
| > Real-world applications include environmental monitoring or
| disaster response.
|
| _Disaster response_. There 's absolutely no way this would be
| used for any form of military application ok?
| jameshart wrote:
| It's made by a team from Zurich. If the Swiss army get hold
| of this technology then the applications will cover
| everything from whittling wooden sticks, to removing screws,
| to opening wine bottles. Advanced models might even have a
| toothpick or a pair of nail scissors.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| Everytime I see the Slaughterbots video posted, I roll my eyes.
| There are currently many weapons capable of VAST destruction,
| and suddenly _this_ is where we should start drawing the line?
| If military drones were to become real and as capable as in the
| video, they would be hard to aquire, maintain, operate and keep
| hidden.
|
| Besides that, yes, I do tend to believe that autonomous flying
| drones will play a large role in future conflicts. This dude I
| follow on Reddit thinks this based on what he is seeing going
| on in Ukraine[1]. I got sold on it as a possibility.
|
| [1]
| https://www.reddit.com/r/CredibleDefense/comments/15uimh0/cr...
| soligern wrote:
| Vast destruction is almost never used because of the
| consequences and collateral damage. Surgical, cheap attacks
| would be used on an everyday basis. This is what makes it
| terrifying. It doesn't even have to be murder, even
| surveillance would be the end of a way of life.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| You should watch more combat footage on Reddit. Artillery is
| woefully ineffective against even lightly protected troops.
| It takes about a dozen expensive 155mm shells to get one kill
| against troops out in the open.
|
| It still takes about two of the much more expensive cluster
| munitions to get one kill. The submunitions in those things
| are about as expensive as a "murder bot" would be.
|
| An actual person-seeking drone might have a failure rate
| lower than 50%.
|
| A single shell with 20 mini drones could take out a dozen
| troops, even if they're in a trench, or spread out, or lying
| on the ground to avoid shrapnel.
|
| It would be the _end_ of infantry warfare, forever.
|
| Squishy meat troops can't evade tiny bots with 1000 fps
| cameras and inhuman reaction times.
| I_Am_Nous wrote:
| [Nah] Being afraid of automated, weaponized drones
|
| [!!!] Being afraid of social media enabling something like
| automated, weaponized drones
|
| This boogieman from the future is kind of overshadowing the
| fact that social media is already weaponized and used to harm
| people, and can be used in increasingly effective ways
| without the need for shaped charges or even physical objects.
| networkchad wrote:
| [dead]
| trevor-e wrote:
| It's the precision and nimbleness that's scary to me compared
| to weapons capable of vast destruction.
| Teever wrote:
| > they would be hard to aquire, maintain, operate and keep
| hidden.
|
| How exactly?
|
| Are you expecting some sort of DRM in all commercial EDA and
| CAD software? Will opensource CAD and EDA software become
| illegal?
|
| Will customs search all packages from Chinese PCB
| manufacturers for illicit drone designs?
|
| Of course a nuclear weapon can kill more people than a drone
| swarm, but that's besides the point.
|
| What exactly does non-proliferation look like for drone
| swarms? What happens when the cost of a drone swarm drops to
| $10?
| RealityVoid wrote:
| Because if you look around at sophisticated military
| hardware (which these drones, when they will exist, will
| be) it's all like that.
|
| I feel that the point our stances diverge is you feel these
| kind of weapons systems would become something a skilled
| hacker could make in a shed out of AliExpress parts for a
| 10$ bom, whereas I view it as being a complex weapon system
| that would be sophisticated and relies on battlefield
| infrastructure and complex supply chains to be feasible to
| properly deploy.
|
| I think if you look at cutting edge weapons, my belief is
| no hacker could build them in their garage, no matter how
| sophisticated. Hell, take a look at the pathetic state of
| "3d printed" weapons to see how I imagine DIY
| "slaughterbots" would look like.
|
| And acquiring the real weapons would not be easy at all.
| Heck, even now, if you want to acquire for your projects
| certain camera or heat sensors you have tons of hoops to
| jump through to get your hands on them.
|
| Besides, even IF it would be something a DIY-er could do,
| someone wanting to kill civilians would probably use the
| most effective tools, least resource intensive, least
| effort tool, least conspicuous to gather resources and this
| would not be it. Today any maniac can use a car to plow
| down civilians or get a gun and go on a rampage. That is
| low effort high impact. This would be a lot higher effort.
| Probably kind of the same impact.
| varjag wrote:
| FPV killer drones used in Ukraine now are really slapdash
| designs: often just motors on a flat fixture with a
| charge rubber-banded to it. They are used to devastating
| effect.
|
| The only part of this technology that is remotely
| possible to tackle on is proliferation of explosives.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| Fully agree. I mentioned in my original post I believe
| them to be very capable on a battlefield. But from there
| to slaughterbots like targeter drones there is a looong
| way. I believe my points still remain valid.
| bhhaskin wrote:
| You don't need to worry about the drones themselves. The
| drones are useless without the explosive munitions. Good
| luck acquiring that without raising any flags. Not to
| mention somehow acquiring all the training data and ML
| modals to actually make them useful. Then there is the
| compute power that would be needed and coms infrastructure.
|
| it puts it firmly out of reach for anyone that isn't state
| sponsored.
|
| Not saying autonomous weapons won't/couldn't be an issue.
| just pointing out that drone swarms won't be.
| yreg wrote:
| What makes you sure that the ML models to actually make
| them useful won't be available on huggingface?
| Teever wrote:
| Improvised explosives are trivial to make, motivated
| people will find a way. If they can make meth, marijuana,
| or moonshine they can make explosives.
|
| The rest of the issues are mere technical speedbumps that
| industrious open source people will cruise over.
| cyberax wrote:
| It's trivially easy to make several kilos of high
| explosives with stuff from the hardware store.
|
| You can also use poisons like sarin or even good old
| cyanide dissolved in DMSO.
| toss1 wrote:
| >>explosive munitions. Good luck acquiring that without
| raising any flags
|
| Not if you were a bit precocious in HC chemistry; I know
| my friends and I were not even close to alone in knowing
| all kinds of interesting fireworks recipes, all of which
| were well tested, and could be configured for anything
| from a small 'pop' to far more power than a slaughterbot.
| All from basic chemicals that can be easily be acquired
| without raising an eyebrow (could alternatively just
| repurpose a bullet/ shotgun shell, very easily obtained).
| The ability to put it right on target means that very
| little is needed.
|
| >>acquiring all the training data and ML modals to
| actually make them useful.
|
| Sure, if you are looking for fully ai-controlled and
| integrated with a city-wide CCTV system, that's a big
| task. But drone control and swarming is already out of
| the bag. Even a basic open-source Pixhawk does obstacle
| avoidance, and so can likely be reprogrammed for
| obstacle-targeting. Multiple off-the-shelf drones have
| done "follow-me" for years. I'd be astonished if a
| competent team with five-figure funding couldn't make a
| working system that could be deployed near a target, ID,
| it and home in.
|
| We're way past needing state funding. The fact that it is
| not here suggests that while the scenario is scary, it is
| not actually that useful? Perhaps that's hoping too much.
| margalabargala wrote:
| Consider that despite grenades being dropped from drones
| onto Russian soldiers in Ukraine on a daily basis, it
| happens to American civilians never despite America's
| extremely high homicide rate. This is due to a lack of
| grenades, not a lack of drones.
|
| The main thing gating slaughterbots from reality is the
| proliferation of the shaped explosive, not of the delivery
| mechanism.
| Teever wrote:
| Americans kill each other with guns because guns are
| cheap and plentiful, not because grenades are scarce. If
| guns were as scarce as frag grenades then it would be a
| competition between which one is more effective at
| killing and the availability wouldn't factor into the
| weapon choice at all.
|
| What you're telling me is that slaughterbots will be
| armed with guns that shoot bullets, not fragementation
| grenades.
| margalabargala wrote:
| Well, it's a bit more than that. People kill each other
| with whatever they have close at hand when they get into
| a fight; handguns are easily carried into a bar or on the
| street, which is why more people are killed with handguns
| than long rifles in America despite more of the latter
| existing. People aren't going to start carrying drones
| with propellers around in their pockets.
|
| It could be used by some people who want to do targeted
| killings, e.g. in gang violence, where it could be better
| than other methods maybe. But on the other hand, RC
| helicopters able to carry and shoot a gun have existed
| since at least 2006:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZCH1492CzA
|
| The number of people who actually want to kill lots of
| people without being physically present is extremely
| small; so small that in a country the size of the US, one
| only crops up every couple decades, e.g. Timothy McVeigh.
|
| I would make a solid bet that proliferation of cheap
| drones does not impact the homicide or terrorism rate in
| the US in either direction.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Grenades are low precision weapons that are relatively
| safe to use. Guns are high precision but very difficult
| to use in a firefight.
|
| If you watch Ukraine footage, soldiers barely even look
| where they're shooting. They're just trying to establish
| suppression over an area so that they can toss more
| grenades to kill people.
|
| That's because both sides have guns. If you aren't
| fighting an armed combatant to the death. The calculus
| changes a lot.
| progrus wrote:
| SQL is more dangerous.
| abduhl wrote:
| "Now a group of researchers from the University of Zurich and
| Intel has set a new milestone with the first autonomous system
| capable of beating human champions at a physical sport: drone
| racing."
|
| This is somewhat impressive but let's be honest here: drone
| racing is about as much of a physical sport as riding a Peloton.
| gaudat wrote:
| Related: (coarse language) https://m.soundcloud.com/voice-
| crack-central-69/edp445s-is-j...
| gessha wrote:
| Might be a mistranslation but I think what they meant was
| sports situated in the real world as opposed to the digital
| world. That requires a lot more feature learning and
| engineering than let's say chess and go where board state can
| be more easily encoded.
| jmpman wrote:
| When's the next contest when each team of paintball players each
| get a single AI Drone armed with a paintball gun? Let's not kid
| ourselves, that's a more accurate simulation of where this
| research is going.
| gessha wrote:
| This is not very surprising. Drone control is a pretty
| challenging skill for a human to learn. Good work from the drone
| agent team though.
| epolanski wrote:
| Slightly OT but I don't think that Deep blue's achievement
| against Kasparov is the milestone they make it to be, as the
| moves of the computer were still vetted by other grandmasters.
|
| There's no doubt that if deep blue would've not beaten Kasparov
| another computer would've just few years later (I also think
| algos have made insane improvements since then, it's not just a
| matter of raw speed) but still that game is not the kind of
| achievement that it's touted imho.
| c420 wrote:
| Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37324024
| aaron695 wrote:
| [dead]
| iAMkenough wrote:
| A change in lighting conditions causes it to fail. Seems like
| they're a ways away from applying this outside of a controlled
| environment.
| grecy wrote:
| I'd be willing to bet they'll get it racing in the dark much
| better than humans can...
| bprater wrote:
| Only if it's using non-vision sensors. Plenty of FPV drones
| fly at night, and it's all down to pilot expertise.
| salynchnew wrote:
| The proposed use cases in the paper like "forest monitoring,"
| etc. seem like uses cases in highly dynamic environments. It
| seems like the applications will lend themselves more towards
| human pilots for the time being.
|
| Fun experiment and test, though! Very interesting.
| capableweb wrote:
| It seems to require training on a static environment before it
| can actually execute and drive the race track, is that true? If
| so, wonder how long time / how much resources the training would
| require.
|
| I first was under the impression that the entire thing was
| executed in real-time with onboard sensors and computer, but
| seems that's not entirely true if I understand it correctly.
| jtbayly wrote:
| Video?
| saidinesh5 wrote:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fBiataDpGIo
|
| I'm guessing it is this one
| javier_e06 wrote:
| Great video! Noise was added to the AI decision making.
| Reminds me the the saying: "Silence among silence is not true
| silence, silence among noise is true silence" Next challenge:
| moving gates!
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