July 12, 2011 • 28 mins
What's that buzzing around the room? A bird? A plane? Nope, it's just a robotic insect sent by some shadow government. Join Robert and Julie as they check in on drone technology, the rise of biomimetic bird-bots and just how the future may shake out.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And
Julie know it's been in the news recently. Weener's weener.
Well yeah, yeah, but but then below the headline, Okay, yes, yes, uh,
(00:24):
very important technological advances about drones. Yeah, tiny robots rootsiny
robots that could be the the proverbial fly on the
wall on the proverbial wall in the room where But
we wouldn't necessarily want that. I think that we have
enough media streaming about him. We don't necessarily need a
(00:46):
microdrone hanging out in his bedroom exactly. Yeah. Um, but yeah,
I mean it's it's The New York Times had a
great article called war evolves with drones. Some Tinese bugs
and also the larger, more conventional drones were recently in
the news. They were the ones that gathered intelligent on
Osama bin Lan's Pakistani hideaway using one of the new
(01:09):
stealth drones. Uh So, this is the technology that is
getting a lot of traction these days, and it's pretty important.
And the microdrone thing is incredibly cool. And definitely feeds
into my paranoia about privacy and your paranoia is that
tiny robots are listening to every word you say and
watching you change clothes or something. Yes, yeah, yeah, perv
(01:32):
tiny probos outside my window wearing little trench coats. Well
it's uh, it's interesting, um talking about paranoia because Iran,
that the government of Iran has A has shown some
paranoid that and I'm not saying it's it's uh, it's
it's it's bad paranoia because uh that they've they've been uh,
there've been a couple of stories in the last few years.
(01:53):
In two thousand eight, they they arrested a quote arrested
to pigeons that were a suspected of spying near a
uranium and richmon facility. And in two thousand seven, fourteen
squirrels were supposedly captured. That we're armed with state of
the art espionage equipment, um, which they sound ridiculous arresting
squirrels and and uh and and pigeons. But but the
(02:16):
charge was here that these were animals that had been
geared up with some sort of espionage equipment and were
being used by an outside force, probably the United States,
to see what they were doing. So, but imagine that
that paranoia taking a step farther to where it's where
it's the paranoia is that the squirrels may not actually
be squirrels. They may be robots. The birds maybe robots
(02:38):
spying on us. The bugs may actually be robots spying
on our every move and uh and if and certainly
if you're a country like Iran, uh, this could be
a very well possibility in the near future. Well, and
also think that the context too, I mean with stuck
snut in Iran, which we know is the computer virus
that was developed to essentially like bring down the nuclear capacity,
(03:01):
shut down the system. So you can understand why they
might take help look around a park and start to
get a little bit paranoid about the nearest chipmunk, right,
especially since this is where the technology has been headed
and and where it's continuing to to to head with
with with some real impressive speed. Yeah, and when we
talk about a drone, let's and particularly a microdrone, let's
(03:22):
talk about what this is. This is essentially a super
fancy remote controlled plane, and it's an unmanned aerial vehicle, yes,
generally with some degree of autonomy. Um, there's a there's
an important distance. Like the most famous examples are the
Predator and the and the Reaper, which are have been
just to stand out aerial drones for the U. S. Military. Uh.
(03:48):
And we have an article on on both of these
on the House Stuff Work website. So if you go
to the House Touff House Stuff Works, go to the
search bar, putt in Predator or put in a Reaper,
and you'll you'll get a really nice article. Yeah, and
it'll tell you everything under the because we're not going
to really go into the hood with these in this podcast.
But but they are really cool. Um, I mean just
the technology, you know, not any judgments on how they're used.
(04:09):
But but but it's really interesting technology. So uh, it
basically comes down to all these things are what we
call in in the loop system. Okay, so they're not
they're not really robots out there, you know. You know,
you're not creating a machine and saying, hey, go out
and kill go out and do this job and then
come back and tell me how it went. On the
other hand, it's not a guy setting there you know,
(04:32):
uh and controlling it the whole time. It's uh, it's
programmed to a certain degree. Yeah, it's it's essentially someone
who's at at the controls to uh, to dictate the
application of lethal force. Right, So it's kind of a
hybrid between autonomy and remote control and UH. That's basically
the state of these U A vise, these UM, these
(04:54):
amand aerial vehicles that that are out there really in
most of the skies over military zones that that the
US is engaged in, that's right, And they're there are
two different types. There's of surveillance drones, right, and there
are combat drones with missiles. Surveillance like the UM. It
would be like a predator just just seeing what the
(05:16):
ladle land is, right or or in this case what
we're talking with us and bin Laden used to tell
where a target is and then the means of reaching
that target may actually just be troops or Yeah. And
it's very unusual that they will use a combat drone
to take out UM like a compound like UM some
op in lands which they did not, but you know,
(05:38):
from time to time they've taken out all kind of members.
If they were say driving UM in a car, you know,
across the highway or whatever, they would use UM one
of these drones to blow up the car. But again
this is unusual. It's more likely used for surveillance. But
um obviously if it's a combat drone and it's got missiles,
then there's a higher level of engagement with the person
(06:00):
was controlling it. Um. So this is from a Wired article. Rather,
this is from their their Danger Roum, their blog. Um
it says unmanned aerial vehicles are huge growth industry for
the US and its closest allies, and the source of
one of America's greatest military advantages. Starting in the mid
ninety nineties, the unarmed Predator drone helped the US build
(06:20):
an unprecedented persistent surveillance system capable of spotting targets around
the clock. Later, armed with missiles, the Predator became an
aerial sniper, picking off hundreds of of insurgents in Iraq, Afghanistan,
and Pakistan every year. So the Pentagon has scores of
communication satellites for linking drones and ground troops and imagery analysts.
(06:43):
And the Pentagon now has some seven thousand aerial drones
compared with fewer than fifty just a decade ago. So,
as you can see, this is a really important part
of how the US is is uh, sort of trying
to figure out this war on terror as their calling it,
and just general security around the world. Yeah, I mean
the advantages here are huge. Um, just to run through
(07:06):
a few of them here, I mean most obviously, you
replace putting a soldier into a dangerous situation and uh,
and that's why there's there's there's a lot of effort
towards creating land based drone technology too, and there have
been a number of these have been tested, but nothing
is really the standard. It hasn't been standardized in the
same way that these U A v s or are
(07:26):
ruling the skies now. Um. Then, but another important thing
that reduces civilian casualties have used properly and if you
have sufficient ethical programming developed, which is that's kind of
like looking forward not so much now. Um. It also
acts as a looking forward to. It could act as
a force multiplier where um, you know, we talked about
(07:47):
this in the loop situation, Man in the loop where
there's a guy controlling it, uh, you know, and he's
gonna jump in and you know, do the fine tuning
or the application of lethal force. But they're they're talking
about eventually moving it towards a man on the loop
where you basically have like one guy manning a team
of robots. Um. So there'd be these like you know,
(08:08):
maybe six different U a v S mostly doing their
own thing, with one guy supervising and uh you know,
jumping into micro manage as need be. But that would
be a force multiplier because then you have one basically
have one combat pilot um in like six places at once,
which um so. And then then there are a number
(08:29):
of other advantages that that break down to the use
of robots in warfare, which is, uh, you don't have anger, revenge, hunger,
fear uh thrown in there with to to modify what's
going on in the battlefield, um and uh. And it's
just and they can also generally make faster decisions than humans,
though that decision making process, of course, is something that
(08:51):
that requires a great deal of discussion. Yeah, there's been
a lot of questions ethically around that. Right so, um
because there's this this growing disconnect between the American public
and its wars and the drone. Again, the advantages that
you're not putting anybody in harm's way, at least on
the American front, right, but there is again, that distance
(09:12):
between what is you know, what we're actually doing to
someone else and uh, you know, the decision making process.
So the farther the distance is, the easier it is
to sort of make that decision, right, right, It's I
mean it comes back to the thing where it just
makes waging war potentially easier and killing potentially easier, because
I mean, on one hand, like what's the huge um like, like,
(09:33):
what's the worst thing that an army government engaged in
military activity wants to see? Uh? And that is uh,
images of coffins coming home with with dead servicemen and
women in it. You know, that's just that's like, you know,
pr nightmare. Things could be avoided. We've seen it, you know,
banned in the past. But but if you remove that,
where suddenly nothing there's like no risk to servicemen and women,
(09:57):
you know, suddenly there are minimal risk, Like like it
becomes a situation where the fear of one's own death
or the fear of death of of of one's you
one cares about, or just seeing the carnage you're not
going to see the carnage on your own side because
of all these robots. No, But of course the problem
is is that we've seen this time and again Afghanistan.
(10:19):
You have clian civilian casualties and um. The reason is
is that when when you've got this sort of technology,
it's essentially painting a target, the painting a target with
a laser. There there's a host of variables that the
computer has to calibrate the system for. So that includes wind, speed,
direction and other battlefield variables. So something can go wrong.
(10:42):
It's very possible in any technology, there's going to be
a margin of air and deaths are going to happen. Well,
even if it works perfectly, if you're you're using a
basically robotic army against human insurgents, humans are gonna die
on one side and robots will occasionally crash on the other.
And it's a there's a there's a certain there's a
large inequity there. Yeah. Yeah, And again the main problem
(11:06):
here is this question of autonomy as we go forward
with this technology, because it will become more and more autonomous, right,
this is the idea. I mean, you know, typically technology
doesn't go backward, right, so if we create a system
that is more enhanced that it can make more decisions
than the margin of error could possibly go up. And
we've talked with Dr Arkin from Georgia Tech before, who
(11:28):
is a robotics ethicist and uh in deals with warfare
and robots quite a bit, and he was talking about
programming robots with UM the Geneva protocol, right, Yeah, having
this ethnical ethical governor and the would they would dictate
how it's going to carry out it's it's military, right,
(11:48):
which makes sense. I mean, this is a this is
a good step forward, right because if you can program that,
if you can give the algorithm for for you know,
if and then then you can avoid some some of
the pitfalls. The problem is that people will point out
is a robots do not have a nuanced ability to
deal with emotions, and we know that emotions, for better
or worse, can guide our judgment. So you've you know,
(12:09):
on the one hand, you've got the passion of war
is reduced with these UM autonomous machines. But on the
other hand, you know, there's this empathy and so on
and so forth that sort of makes us humans and
human makes us UM create exceptions, is not there? Yeah,
And I mean modern warfare, especially such a chaotic situation,
and we're having there are enough obstacles and just creating
(12:32):
a robot that can navigate the human kitchen. Yeah, you know,
so it's uh, the the idea of creating a robot
that could they could seamlessly navigate the environment of war,
an environment that humans cannot even navigate without catastrophe is uh,
it is quite a hurdle to overcome. Yeah, and so
but you know, here we've got these micro drones, which
(12:55):
at this point they're not lengthal right, they're just surveilling. UM.
So to talk a little bit more about the micro
drones and less about UM drones like the predator, just
kind of consider this stat again, this is from Wired.
This is since September eleventh, UM, the hours the Air
Force devotes to flying missions for intelligent surveillance and reconnaissance
(13:17):
have gone up three thousand one, most of that from
increased operations of drones. Every day, the Air Force must
process almost fifteen hundred hours of full motion video and
another fifteen hundreds still images, much of it from predators
and reapers on around the clock combat air patrols. Okay,
that is a huge amount of data. Now consider this
(13:40):
micro aviary camouflage, this microdrone, UM, these you know, tiny
little drones that are being developed and how much data
they're going to be amassing. But before we talk about that,
we probably talk about just the micro aviary UM drone
because it's pretty cool. All Right, we're gonna take a
quick break and then we're gonna get back to all
of this. So hanging there one second. This presentation is
(14:06):
brought to you by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow, and we're
back when we're talking about biomimicry trying to make a
drone that looks like a bird, flies like a bird,
or flies like an insect, depending on you know which
which direction they're going there. But this is fascinating in
(14:26):
that biomamicry is generally more involved in I want to
solve a problem, like an engineering problem or design problem
of some kind, instead of trying to create some sort
of like reinvent the wheel, I'm just gonna look at
the way um nature has solved this problem through millions
of years of evolution, So you know, it's stuff like
(14:46):
I want to make a swimsuit that allows the swimmer
to uh to move faster through the water. Uh. Instead
of just trying to come with something off the top
of my head, I'm going to look at how shark
skin has evolved right right, or um or fins. I'm
gonna look at dolphins and see how they can actually
like eject themselves into the air and so on and
(15:07):
so far. We actually have a couple of articles on
biomimicry on the website. If you go to house stuff
works dot com and just throw bio mimicry into the
search bar, you'll find a couple of them. I think
I may have written two of them. Probably did I
don't know. Yeah, we're a handful of them. Um. But
from my understanding that they are focusing more on insects
right now rather than birds. Um. And I'm assuming that
(15:28):
they've done birds so far because it's very hard to
get you know, smaller and smaller. But birds are a
little bit more difficult to mimic because of their musclature
and because of the energy it takes to get them.
That's the interesting thing about this, because most, like I say,
biomimicry is about I need to solve a problem, so
I'm gonna see how nature did it right, This is
more about I mean, there's in robotics, there is that
there's also a lot of interest in how insects move
(15:51):
and behave because it's it's a sometimes it's a simple
cognitive model to look at in terms of how it's thinking.
And then also like you know, trying to create something
that's gonna move across the floor. Uh. Some oftentimes, like
a spider design just makes more sense than trying to
make it walk like a human. So but but in
this where they're trying to make a drone resemble the
(16:14):
animal form. Uh. And certainly when we're talking about something
that flies, uh, the nature is kind of forced to
follow this this winged model, this flapping winged model, which
is really not um all that that that doesn't make
a lot of sense from an energy standpoint. It's not
you have to spend a lot of energy to flap
(16:34):
flap wings, but nature has not yet figured out how
to evolve the rotor blade, so so that they're they're
they're forced to flap. Um. But we've all seen stats
about like hummingbirds, about how much food they have to
consume and how much energy they blow through to flap
those tiny wings so fastbeats per minute or something crazy
like yeah, yeah, like some of them have to go
(16:55):
into basically a state of hibernation and every night just
because because they can't burn any more energy. Um, because
it's not energy efficient. So they're having to when creating
a flap of flapping winged robot Um, you're you're having
to pursue u an energy inefficient design when you could
(17:16):
really make a more energy eficient design being inspired by it.
They're actually trying to mimic it so that nobody can
tell that it's an actual robotic hummingbird spying on you, right, Um,
So it's kind of a disingenuous form of biomimicry. Yeah,
it's interesting. There's that the hummingbird drone that they unveiled. Um,
it's it's still a prototype, but it can rapidly beat
(17:38):
its wings and it can propel the at eleven miles
per hour and even perch on a window. So the
problem is when you look at it, you know, if
you just kind of if you glance it, didn't really
look at it carefully. Okay, yeah, there's I see a bird, right,
But when you look at it, it actually looks really inelegant.
It moves, you know, kind of awkwardly, it looks mechanical.
(18:00):
It reminds me completely of Biboo, the owl from Clash
of the Times. Yes, the robotic owl that does the
which I love, but I don't really think would make
a great microdone right because it's very obvious. Well plus
the hummingbird drone it says US Air Force on the wing.
It's giveaway. Yeah, a little obvious. Um, but I mean
they're they're important because these micro jones could be used
(18:23):
to get a much better view of myriad things like
natural disasters, floods, fires, Um, you know if the politicians. Yes, Um,
they're used in aerial photography and and they're even used
in wildlife footage which are seen in nature documentaries. So
and again, like you know, if a building implodes and
(18:45):
there's uh, you know a lot of debris. These are
things that we can use to get a better beat
on things. It's not just you know, used for warfare.
So they're really interesting and uh it kind of makes
me wonder like if one day we're all going to
have our very own micro own that we use, like
I don't know, in in conjunction with our an iPhone app,
(19:06):
so that we're on a zip line on vacation, you know,
you just throw up your microdrone, get some really great footage,
or you leave your microdone behind to attend meetings when
you go out of town. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, anyway,
I digress. We should probably get back to the actual
military military applications of it, because if you if you
throw it into this this this overall design that is
(19:27):
this idea of like a robotic military, you can easily
imagine like the micro Jones sort of doing the first
level scouting and surveillance, and then there's there there's like
a higher level of surveillance with with larger flying vehicles,
and then you have the the attack you a these
little it'll actually hit the target when needed, and then meanwhile,
like all the humans are back at their base. Just
(19:49):
yeah yeah, and they're also I wanted to mention us too,
they're trying to increase the area that they can actually surveil.
And right now they have what is called a soda
straw view, uh you know with the with the drones,
but um, they're looking at a gorgon stair technology that's
what they're calling it. Yeah, and again that's another great
band title, right well, and another clash in the Times reference,
(20:12):
right oh, Because the idea is it's like a lot
of little straws that are going to be like the
snakeheads on the Medusa. I'm assuming so that are just
going to freeze the landscape that it's looking at. It
seems like they we just want to want. They must
be really into Greek mythology or Clash of the times,
because it seems like you just wanna, you know, compare
to the the the eye structure of a fly. Yeah,
I don't know whoever is uh doing all the marketing
(20:34):
for this really has a good beat on histrionics, I
have to say, because I mean if the the stealth
drone that was used in Pakistans called the Beast of Kindahar,
I mean nuts, how do you not love that? Uh?
But anyway, this gorgon stair technology can capture live video
an entire city. But that requires two thousand analysts process
the data feeds from a single drone compared with nineteen
(20:57):
analysts per drone today. That being side, this is something
technology that's going to be used pretty soon. Um, that's
not much of a force multiplier. Though if that many
people were required to sift through the data exactly exactly,
and then again that's you couldn't actually send those people
out to perch on, uh, somebody's shoulder in a war
zone or you know, in an enemy nation's capital. That's
(21:20):
the rub. We cannot shrink ourselves yet yet yet. But
of course what does this do. This is kind of
freaking out some people. Why because this could be used
for non warfare applications. And in fact, there's a great
Washington Post article called domestic use of aerial drones by
law enforcement likely to prompt privacy debate and you know
(21:41):
how this feeds into my whole privacy thing. By two
thousand and thirteen, the f A expects to have formulated
new rules that would allow police across the country to
routinely fly lightweight on armed drones up to four feet
above ground, high enough for them to be largely invisible
eyes in the sky. And uh, it's it's cost like
(22:01):
fifty bucks, so it's really not that expensive. It's actually
less than a police helicopter. So it's very likely that
this is going to be used a lot in the future,
but it can with the The rub is is that
they can record activities of public below with high resolution
infrared and thermal imaging cameras. So you'll reach a point
where someone like people will scattered there like, oh, my goodness,
(22:23):
is a police pigeon. Well it's not. You know, it's
not a real pigeon, it's it's mechanical. Well this for
this application, then it will be an actual like says no,
like drone. But you know, obviously, um, this could become minature.
It could become cost effective enough to get a micro drone.
I mean we're talking about that, this is going to happen.
Who knows about microdrones might be in use all the time.
(22:47):
What does that mean my bonfire? When I'm playing kumbay
on my guitar, they're going to be seeing that. Nobody
needs to see that. Now that the the idea of
like a totally automated military like it, it fascinates me
on two well on multiple levels. But two things immediately
come to mind. First of all, the Dark Crystal. Have
(23:08):
you seen the Dark Crystal? I've not seen the Dark Crystal.
I feel like it comes up there like every want
someone in our conversations and I have to see it.
Well it's it's a classic. And but but in this
world of the Dark Crystal, you have the evil Skexies
who all kind of look like grotesque vultures and in costume,
and you know they're they're cowardly and they stick to
their their castle, and they want to hunt down the
gelf links. Uh, that's their thing and uh. And so
(23:31):
they send out these like these crystals that are on
bat wings, the spy everywhere to try and find the
gulf links. And if they find the gelf links, then
they send out these giant beetle monstrosities that shamble into
the village to try and chop them to pieces or
bring them back captive. And so I would hate to see, like,
(23:51):
you know, our nation follow the skexy model of military
conguest to where we're a bunch of you know, disgusting
vulture creatures who just send out are strange creations to
get what we want from the surrounding world because it
becomes easier to do so suddenly you need more resources.
Well I don't have to actually fight a war. I
just send off these robots to uh to secure it
(24:14):
for me. It becomes this, you know, kind of a
robotic surgical colonialism. Um. And then on the other hand,
what happens when you have two opposing forces each with
a robot military does does war? Ever? End. If too
robot armies are fighting each other, it becomes who runs
out of parks first? Right, Yeah, It's interesting because right
(24:34):
now the United States is certainly on the cutting edge
of this, right, but everybody wants it on the game
and they will and and in fact that the Danger
Room on Wired talks about how China is actually really
like a couple of decades behind on this technology and
they will eventually um catch up. But I mean, for
right now, you know we're we're the big game changer
(24:54):
on this, but I mean, this is this is the
whole thing. I can sure we're game changers now, but
twenty thirty years from now, how is it going to
be used against us? And or will it be used
against us? And that's that's the danger. Whenever you introduce
a new technology, right yeah, you're you're actually essentially introducing
it against yourself at some point. Well I guess I
just hope that if if if worse came to worse,
(25:17):
and like the robots of us and the robots of
China we're about to fight, the Japan's Mecca Godzilla would
would jump in and just calm everybody down, like like
pulled up both of its claws and be like, all right, guys,
settle it. Let's settle down. Yeah, yeah, most certainly, and
then hopefully their technology will have filtered down to us
and we can all just pull over our vending machine.
(25:39):
Um cloaks, right that they've developed, Well they're not really cloaks,
but you know what I'm talking to I've told you
about this all right, where you look like a vending machine, right,
it's actually like this little zip up thing that you
can have that you erect. You know, it's it's portable,
you can have it in your backpack, you whip it out,
you set it up like a tent, and all of
a sudden you look like a vending machine. I see,
(26:00):
that's good. I like I like that use of our
ingenuity rather than let's figure out better ways to blow
each other up. But I will say a microdrone app
would be pretty cool on a zip line, would it? Like,
instead of getting on the zip line, you would sense
you have a microdone who actually filming while you're on
the microdraze. Well, yes, that would be good. And I
(26:21):
should also also mentioned to the Google CEO. I can't
remember the name of this cat, but he purchased a
microdone for his own personal use, which freaked a bunch
people out because, of course they thought that Google was
going to start using instead of street view, you know, microdrones.
Huh well, I would be more concerned if, like it
seems like the better use of that for a large
(26:42):
corporation would be corporate espionage. Yes, y mm hmm. Well,
if we see something flying around here that looks like people,
we will know corporate espionage is going on. Yeah yeah,
well yeah, so hopefully everybody knows to be a little
more afraid of that unidentified bug or bird buzzing around
outside the office. Now. Uh so, let's turn our attention
(27:04):
to a little listener mail. All right, Eric, right, son,
it says, I just wanted to share a quickie with you.
It's untrue that the platypus does not get respect. We
respect the animal. Here in Oregon. The Platypus Trophy is
awarded every year to the winner of the Civil War.
The n c A a rivalry football game held between
the Saintly, Beautiful and Awesome University of Oregon Ducks in
(27:28):
the Evil, Ugly Vile Oregon State Beavers. Because the two
team maskets are the Dusk, the ducks and the beavers.
Someone carved a beautiful wooden platypus that is now used
as the trophy pome. Well that is pretty awesome. Yeah yeah,
because it's kind of not really but it's sort of thematic. Yeah,
nicely done, thanks er. Yeah. So, um hey, if you
(27:51):
guys want to share anything with us, you can first
of all find us on Twitter, Facebook. We are blow
the Mind on both of those and uh we populate
bocos fees with all sorts of cool links and thoughts
and uh and you know stuff about our upcoming episodes,
and you can always drop us a line at Blow
the Mind at how stuff works dot com. Be sure
(28:16):
to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And
Julie know it's been in the news recently. Weener's weener.
Well yeah, yeah, but but then below the headline, Okay, yes, yes, uh,
(00:24):
very important technological advances about drones. Yeah, tiny robots rootsiny
robots that could be the the proverbial fly on the
wall on the proverbial wall in the room where But
we wouldn't necessarily want that. I think that we have
enough media streaming about him. We don't necessarily need a
(00:46):
microdrone hanging out in his bedroom exactly. Yeah. Um, but yeah,
I mean it's it's The New York Times had a
great article called war evolves with drones. Some Tinese bugs
and also the larger, more conventional drones were recently in
the news. They were the ones that gathered intelligent on
Osama bin Lan's Pakistani hideaway using one of the new
(01:09):
stealth drones. Uh So, this is the technology that is
getting a lot of traction these days, and it's pretty important.
And the microdrone thing is incredibly cool. And definitely feeds
into my paranoia about privacy and your paranoia is that
tiny robots are listening to every word you say and
watching you change clothes or something. Yes, yeah, yeah, perv
(01:32):
tiny probos outside my window wearing little trench coats. Well
it's uh, it's interesting, um talking about paranoia because Iran,
that the government of Iran has A has shown some
paranoid that and I'm not saying it's it's uh, it's
it's it's bad paranoia because uh that they've they've been uh,
there've been a couple of stories in the last few years.
(01:53):
In two thousand eight, they they arrested a quote arrested
to pigeons that were a suspected of spying near a
uranium and richmon facility. And in two thousand seven, fourteen
squirrels were supposedly captured. That we're armed with state of
the art espionage equipment, um, which they sound ridiculous arresting
squirrels and and uh and and pigeons. But but the
(02:16):
charge was here that these were animals that had been
geared up with some sort of espionage equipment and were
being used by an outside force, probably the United States,
to see what they were doing. So, but imagine that
that paranoia taking a step farther to where it's where
it's the paranoia is that the squirrels may not actually
be squirrels. They may be robots. The birds maybe robots
(02:38):
spying on us. The bugs may actually be robots spying
on our every move and uh and if and certainly
if you're a country like Iran, uh, this could be
a very well possibility in the near future. Well, and
also think that the context too, I mean with stuck
snut in Iran, which we know is the computer virus
that was developed to essentially like bring down the nuclear capacity,
(03:01):
shut down the system. So you can understand why they
might take help look around a park and start to
get a little bit paranoid about the nearest chipmunk, right,
especially since this is where the technology has been headed
and and where it's continuing to to to head with
with with some real impressive speed. Yeah, and when we
talk about a drone, let's and particularly a microdrone, let's
(03:22):
talk about what this is. This is essentially a super
fancy remote controlled plane, and it's an unmanned aerial vehicle, yes,
generally with some degree of autonomy. Um, there's a there's
an important distance. Like the most famous examples are the
Predator and the and the Reaper, which are have been
just to stand out aerial drones for the U. S. Military. Uh.
(03:48):
And we have an article on on both of these
on the House Stuff Work website. So if you go
to the House Touff House Stuff Works, go to the
search bar, putt in Predator or put in a Reaper,
and you'll you'll get a really nice article. Yeah, and
it'll tell you everything under the because we're not going
to really go into the hood with these in this podcast.
But but they are really cool. Um, I mean just
the technology, you know, not any judgments on how they're used.
(04:09):
But but but it's really interesting technology. So uh, it
basically comes down to all these things are what we
call in in the loop system. Okay, so they're not
they're not really robots out there, you know. You know,
you're not creating a machine and saying, hey, go out
and kill go out and do this job and then
come back and tell me how it went. On the
other hand, it's not a guy setting there you know,
(04:32):
uh and controlling it the whole time. It's uh, it's
programmed to a certain degree. Yeah, it's it's essentially someone
who's at at the controls to uh, to dictate the
application of lethal force. Right, So it's kind of a
hybrid between autonomy and remote control and UH. That's basically
the state of these U A vise, these UM, these
(04:54):
amand aerial vehicles that that are out there really in
most of the skies over military zones that that the
US is engaged in, that's right, And they're there are
two different types. There's of surveillance drones, right, and there
are combat drones with missiles. Surveillance like the UM. It
would be like a predator just just seeing what the
(05:16):
ladle land is, right or or in this case what
we're talking with us and bin Laden used to tell
where a target is and then the means of reaching
that target may actually just be troops or Yeah. And
it's very unusual that they will use a combat drone
to take out UM like a compound like UM some
op in lands which they did not, but you know,
(05:38):
from time to time they've taken out all kind of members.
If they were say driving UM in a car, you know,
across the highway or whatever, they would use UM one
of these drones to blow up the car. But again
this is unusual. It's more likely used for surveillance. But
um obviously if it's a combat drone and it's got missiles,
then there's a higher level of engagement with the person
(06:00):
was controlling it. Um. So this is from a Wired article. Rather,
this is from their their Danger Roum, their blog. Um
it says unmanned aerial vehicles are huge growth industry for
the US and its closest allies, and the source of
one of America's greatest military advantages. Starting in the mid
ninety nineties, the unarmed Predator drone helped the US build
(06:20):
an unprecedented persistent surveillance system capable of spotting targets around
the clock. Later, armed with missiles, the Predator became an
aerial sniper, picking off hundreds of of insurgents in Iraq, Afghanistan,
and Pakistan every year. So the Pentagon has scores of
communication satellites for linking drones and ground troops and imagery analysts.
(06:43):
And the Pentagon now has some seven thousand aerial drones
compared with fewer than fifty just a decade ago. So,
as you can see, this is a really important part
of how the US is is uh, sort of trying
to figure out this war on terror as their calling it,
and just general security around the world. Yeah, I mean
the advantages here are huge. Um, just to run through
(07:06):
a few of them here, I mean most obviously, you
replace putting a soldier into a dangerous situation and uh,
and that's why there's there's there's a lot of effort
towards creating land based drone technology too, and there have
been a number of these have been tested, but nothing
is really the standard. It hasn't been standardized in the
same way that these U A v s or are
(07:26):
ruling the skies now. Um. Then, but another important thing
that reduces civilian casualties have used properly and if you
have sufficient ethical programming developed, which is that's kind of
like looking forward not so much now. Um. It also
acts as a looking forward to. It could act as
a force multiplier where um, you know, we talked about
(07:47):
this in the loop situation, Man in the loop where
there's a guy controlling it, uh, you know, and he's
gonna jump in and you know, do the fine tuning
or the application of lethal force. But they're they're talking
about eventually moving it towards a man on the loop
where you basically have like one guy manning a team
of robots. Um. So there'd be these like you know,
(08:08):
maybe six different U a v S mostly doing their
own thing, with one guy supervising and uh you know,
jumping into micro manage as need be. But that would
be a force multiplier because then you have one basically
have one combat pilot um in like six places at once,
which um so. And then then there are a number
(08:29):
of other advantages that that break down to the use
of robots in warfare, which is, uh, you don't have anger, revenge, hunger,
fear uh thrown in there with to to modify what's
going on in the battlefield, um and uh. And it's
just and they can also generally make faster decisions than humans,
though that decision making process, of course, is something that
(08:51):
that requires a great deal of discussion. Yeah, there's been
a lot of questions ethically around that. Right so, um
because there's this this growing disconnect between the American public
and its wars and the drone. Again, the advantages that
you're not putting anybody in harm's way, at least on
the American front, right, but there is again, that distance
(09:12):
between what is you know, what we're actually doing to
someone else and uh, you know, the decision making process.
So the farther the distance is, the easier it is
to sort of make that decision, right, right, It's I
mean it comes back to the thing where it just
makes waging war potentially easier and killing potentially easier, because
I mean, on one hand, like what's the huge um like, like,
(09:33):
what's the worst thing that an army government engaged in
military activity wants to see? Uh? And that is uh,
images of coffins coming home with with dead servicemen and
women in it. You know, that's just that's like, you know,
pr nightmare. Things could be avoided. We've seen it, you know,
banned in the past. But but if you remove that,
where suddenly nothing there's like no risk to servicemen and women,
(09:57):
you know, suddenly there are minimal risk, Like like it
becomes a situation where the fear of one's own death
or the fear of death of of of one's you
one cares about, or just seeing the carnage you're not
going to see the carnage on your own side because
of all these robots. No, But of course the problem
is is that we've seen this time and again Afghanistan.
(10:19):
You have clian civilian casualties and um. The reason is
is that when when you've got this sort of technology,
it's essentially painting a target, the painting a target with
a laser. There there's a host of variables that the
computer has to calibrate the system for. So that includes wind, speed,
direction and other battlefield variables. So something can go wrong.
(10:42):
It's very possible in any technology, there's going to be
a margin of air and deaths are going to happen. Well,
even if it works perfectly, if you're you're using a
basically robotic army against human insurgents, humans are gonna die
on one side and robots will occasionally crash on the other.
And it's a there's a there's a certain there's a
large inequity there. Yeah. Yeah, And again the main problem
(11:06):
here is this question of autonomy as we go forward
with this technology, because it will become more and more autonomous, right,
this is the idea. I mean, you know, typically technology
doesn't go backward, right, so if we create a system
that is more enhanced that it can make more decisions
than the margin of error could possibly go up. And
we've talked with Dr Arkin from Georgia Tech before, who
(11:28):
is a robotics ethicist and uh in deals with warfare
and robots quite a bit, and he was talking about
programming robots with UM the Geneva protocol, right, Yeah, having
this ethnical ethical governor and the would they would dictate
how it's going to carry out it's it's military, right,
(11:48):
which makes sense. I mean, this is a this is
a good step forward, right because if you can program that,
if you can give the algorithm for for you know,
if and then then you can avoid some some of
the pitfalls. The problem is that people will point out
is a robots do not have a nuanced ability to
deal with emotions, and we know that emotions, for better
or worse, can guide our judgment. So you've you know,
(12:09):
on the one hand, you've got the passion of war
is reduced with these UM autonomous machines. But on the
other hand, you know, there's this empathy and so on
and so forth that sort of makes us humans and
human makes us UM create exceptions, is not there? Yeah,
And I mean modern warfare, especially such a chaotic situation,
and we're having there are enough obstacles and just creating
(12:32):
a robot that can navigate the human kitchen. Yeah, you know,
so it's uh, the the idea of creating a robot
that could they could seamlessly navigate the environment of war,
an environment that humans cannot even navigate without catastrophe is uh,
it is quite a hurdle to overcome. Yeah, and so
but you know, here we've got these micro drones, which
(12:55):
at this point they're not lengthal right, they're just surveilling. UM.
So to talk a little bit more about the micro
drones and less about UM drones like the predator, just
kind of consider this stat again, this is from Wired.
This is since September eleventh, UM, the hours the Air
Force devotes to flying missions for intelligent surveillance and reconnaissance
(13:17):
have gone up three thousand one, most of that from
increased operations of drones. Every day, the Air Force must
process almost fifteen hundred hours of full motion video and
another fifteen hundreds still images, much of it from predators
and reapers on around the clock combat air patrols. Okay,
that is a huge amount of data. Now consider this
(13:40):
micro aviary camouflage, this microdrone, UM, these you know, tiny
little drones that are being developed and how much data
they're going to be amassing. But before we talk about that,
we probably talk about just the micro aviary UM drone
because it's pretty cool. All Right, we're gonna take a
quick break and then we're gonna get back to all
of this. So hanging there one second. This presentation is
(14:06):
brought to you by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow, and we're
back when we're talking about biomimicry trying to make a
drone that looks like a bird, flies like a bird,
or flies like an insect, depending on you know which
which direction they're going there. But this is fascinating in
(14:26):
that biomamicry is generally more involved in I want to
solve a problem, like an engineering problem or design problem
of some kind, instead of trying to create some sort
of like reinvent the wheel, I'm just gonna look at
the way um nature has solved this problem through millions
of years of evolution, So you know, it's stuff like
(14:46):
I want to make a swimsuit that allows the swimmer
to uh to move faster through the water. Uh. Instead
of just trying to come with something off the top
of my head, I'm going to look at how shark
skin has evolved right right, or um or fins. I'm
gonna look at dolphins and see how they can actually
like eject themselves into the air and so on and
(15:07):
so far. We actually have a couple of articles on
biomimicry on the website. If you go to house stuff
works dot com and just throw bio mimicry into the
search bar, you'll find a couple of them. I think
I may have written two of them. Probably did I
don't know. Yeah, we're a handful of them. Um. But
from my understanding that they are focusing more on insects
right now rather than birds. Um. And I'm assuming that
(15:28):
they've done birds so far because it's very hard to
get you know, smaller and smaller. But birds are a
little bit more difficult to mimic because of their musclature
and because of the energy it takes to get them.
That's the interesting thing about this, because most, like I say,
biomimicry is about I need to solve a problem, so
I'm gonna see how nature did it right, This is
more about I mean, there's in robotics, there is that
there's also a lot of interest in how insects move
(15:51):
and behave because it's it's a sometimes it's a simple
cognitive model to look at in terms of how it's thinking.
And then also like you know, trying to create something
that's gonna move across the floor. Uh. Some oftentimes, like
a spider design just makes more sense than trying to
make it walk like a human. So but but in
this where they're trying to make a drone resemble the
(16:14):
animal form. Uh. And certainly when we're talking about something
that flies, uh, the nature is kind of forced to
follow this this winged model, this flapping winged model, which
is really not um all that that that doesn't make
a lot of sense from an energy standpoint. It's not
you have to spend a lot of energy to flap
(16:34):
flap wings, but nature has not yet figured out how
to evolve the rotor blade, so so that they're they're
they're forced to flap. Um. But we've all seen stats
about like hummingbirds, about how much food they have to
consume and how much energy they blow through to flap
those tiny wings so fastbeats per minute or something crazy
like yeah, yeah, like some of them have to go
(16:55):
into basically a state of hibernation and every night just
because because they can't burn any more energy. Um, because
it's not energy efficient. So they're having to when creating
a flap of flapping winged robot Um, you're you're having
to pursue u an energy inefficient design when you could
(17:16):
really make a more energy eficient design being inspired by it.
They're actually trying to mimic it so that nobody can
tell that it's an actual robotic hummingbird spying on you, right, Um,
So it's kind of a disingenuous form of biomimicry. Yeah,
it's interesting. There's that the hummingbird drone that they unveiled. Um,
it's it's still a prototype, but it can rapidly beat
(17:38):
its wings and it can propel the at eleven miles
per hour and even perch on a window. So the
problem is when you look at it, you know, if
you just kind of if you glance it, didn't really
look at it carefully. Okay, yeah, there's I see a bird, right,
But when you look at it, it actually looks really inelegant.
It moves, you know, kind of awkwardly, it looks mechanical.
(18:00):
It reminds me completely of Biboo, the owl from Clash
of the Times. Yes, the robotic owl that does the
which I love, but I don't really think would make
a great microdone right because it's very obvious. Well plus
the hummingbird drone it says US Air Force on the wing.
It's giveaway. Yeah, a little obvious. Um, but I mean
they're they're important because these micro jones could be used
(18:23):
to get a much better view of myriad things like
natural disasters, floods, fires, Um, you know if the politicians. Yes, Um,
they're used in aerial photography and and they're even used
in wildlife footage which are seen in nature documentaries. So
and again, like you know, if a building implodes and
(18:45):
there's uh, you know a lot of debris. These are
things that we can use to get a better beat
on things. It's not just you know, used for warfare.
So they're really interesting and uh it kind of makes
me wonder like if one day we're all going to
have our very own micro own that we use, like
I don't know, in in conjunction with our an iPhone app,
(19:06):
so that we're on a zip line on vacation, you know,
you just throw up your microdrone, get some really great footage,
or you leave your microdone behind to attend meetings when
you go out of town. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, anyway,
I digress. We should probably get back to the actual
military military applications of it, because if you if you
throw it into this this this overall design that is
(19:27):
this idea of like a robotic military, you can easily
imagine like the micro Jones sort of doing the first
level scouting and surveillance, and then there's there there's like
a higher level of surveillance with with larger flying vehicles,
and then you have the the attack you a these
little it'll actually hit the target when needed, and then meanwhile,
like all the humans are back at their base. Just
(19:49):
yeah yeah, and they're also I wanted to mention us too,
they're trying to increase the area that they can actually surveil.
And right now they have what is called a soda
straw view, uh you know with the with the drones,
but um, they're looking at a gorgon stair technology that's
what they're calling it. Yeah, and again that's another great
band title, right well, and another clash in the Times reference,
(20:12):
right oh, Because the idea is it's like a lot
of little straws that are going to be like the
snakeheads on the Medusa. I'm assuming so that are just
going to freeze the landscape that it's looking at. It
seems like they we just want to want. They must
be really into Greek mythology or Clash of the times,
because it seems like you just wanna, you know, compare
to the the the eye structure of a fly. Yeah,
I don't know whoever is uh doing all the marketing
(20:34):
for this really has a good beat on histrionics, I
have to say, because I mean if the the stealth
drone that was used in Pakistans called the Beast of Kindahar,
I mean nuts, how do you not love that? Uh?
But anyway, this gorgon stair technology can capture live video
an entire city. But that requires two thousand analysts process
the data feeds from a single drone compared with nineteen
(20:57):
analysts per drone today. That being side, this is something
technology that's going to be used pretty soon. Um, that's
not much of a force multiplier. Though if that many
people were required to sift through the data exactly exactly,
and then again that's you couldn't actually send those people
out to perch on, uh, somebody's shoulder in a war
zone or you know, in an enemy nation's capital. That's
(21:20):
the rub. We cannot shrink ourselves yet yet yet. But
of course what does this do. This is kind of
freaking out some people. Why because this could be used
for non warfare applications. And in fact, there's a great
Washington Post article called domestic use of aerial drones by
law enforcement likely to prompt privacy debate and you know
(21:41):
how this feeds into my whole privacy thing. By two
thousand and thirteen, the f A expects to have formulated
new rules that would allow police across the country to
routinely fly lightweight on armed drones up to four feet
above ground, high enough for them to be largely invisible
eyes in the sky. And uh, it's it's cost like
(22:01):
fifty bucks, so it's really not that expensive. It's actually
less than a police helicopter. So it's very likely that
this is going to be used a lot in the future,
but it can with the The rub is is that
they can record activities of public below with high resolution
infrared and thermal imaging cameras. So you'll reach a point
where someone like people will scattered there like, oh, my goodness,
(22:23):
is a police pigeon. Well it's not. You know, it's
not a real pigeon, it's it's mechanical. Well this for
this application, then it will be an actual like says no,
like drone. But you know, obviously, um, this could become minature.
It could become cost effective enough to get a micro drone.
I mean we're talking about that, this is going to happen.
Who knows about microdrones might be in use all the time.
(22:47):
What does that mean my bonfire? When I'm playing kumbay
on my guitar, they're going to be seeing that. Nobody
needs to see that. Now that the the idea of
like a totally automated military like it, it fascinates me
on two well on multiple levels. But two things immediately
come to mind. First of all, the Dark Crystal. Have
(23:08):
you seen the Dark Crystal? I've not seen the Dark Crystal.
I feel like it comes up there like every want
someone in our conversations and I have to see it.
Well it's it's a classic. And but but in this
world of the Dark Crystal, you have the evil Skexies
who all kind of look like grotesque vultures and in costume,
and you know they're they're cowardly and they stick to
their their castle, and they want to hunt down the
gelf links. Uh, that's their thing and uh. And so
(23:31):
they send out these like these crystals that are on
bat wings, the spy everywhere to try and find the
gulf links. And if they find the gelf links, then
they send out these giant beetle monstrosities that shamble into
the village to try and chop them to pieces or
bring them back captive. And so I would hate to see, like,
(23:51):
you know, our nation follow the skexy model of military
conguest to where we're a bunch of you know, disgusting
vulture creatures who just send out are strange creations to
get what we want from the surrounding world because it
becomes easier to do so suddenly you need more resources.
Well I don't have to actually fight a war. I
just send off these robots to uh to secure it
(24:14):
for me. It becomes this, you know, kind of a
robotic surgical colonialism. Um. And then on the other hand,
what happens when you have two opposing forces each with
a robot military does does war? Ever? End. If too
robot armies are fighting each other, it becomes who runs
out of parks first? Right, Yeah, It's interesting because right
(24:34):
now the United States is certainly on the cutting edge
of this, right, but everybody wants it on the game
and they will and and in fact that the Danger
Room on Wired talks about how China is actually really
like a couple of decades behind on this technology and
they will eventually um catch up. But I mean, for
right now, you know we're we're the big game changer
(24:54):
on this, but I mean, this is this is the
whole thing. I can sure we're game changers now, but
twenty thirty years from now, how is it going to
be used against us? And or will it be used
against us? And that's that's the danger. Whenever you introduce
a new technology, right yeah, you're you're actually essentially introducing
it against yourself at some point. Well I guess I
just hope that if if if worse came to worse,
(25:17):
and like the robots of us and the robots of
China we're about to fight, the Japan's Mecca Godzilla would
would jump in and just calm everybody down, like like
pulled up both of its claws and be like, all right, guys,
settle it. Let's settle down. Yeah, yeah, most certainly, and
then hopefully their technology will have filtered down to us
and we can all just pull over our vending machine.
(25:39):
Um cloaks, right that they've developed, Well they're not really cloaks,
but you know what I'm talking to I've told you
about this all right, where you look like a vending machine, right,
it's actually like this little zip up thing that you
can have that you erect. You know, it's it's portable,
you can have it in your backpack, you whip it out,
you set it up like a tent, and all of
a sudden you look like a vending machine. I see,
(26:00):
that's good. I like I like that use of our
ingenuity rather than let's figure out better ways to blow
each other up. But I will say a microdrone app
would be pretty cool on a zip line, would it? Like,
instead of getting on the zip line, you would sense
you have a microdone who actually filming while you're on
the microdraze. Well, yes, that would be good. And I
(26:21):
should also also mentioned to the Google CEO. I can't
remember the name of this cat, but he purchased a
microdone for his own personal use, which freaked a bunch
people out because, of course they thought that Google was
going to start using instead of street view, you know, microdrones.
Huh well, I would be more concerned if, like it
seems like the better use of that for a large
(26:42):
corporation would be corporate espionage. Yes, y mm hmm. Well,
if we see something flying around here that looks like people,
we will know corporate espionage is going on. Yeah yeah,
well yeah, so hopefully everybody knows to be a little
more afraid of that unidentified bug or bird buzzing around
outside the office. Now. Uh so, let's turn our attention
(27:04):
to a little listener mail. All right, Eric, right, son,
it says, I just wanted to share a quickie with you.
It's untrue that the platypus does not get respect. We
respect the animal. Here in Oregon. The Platypus Trophy is
awarded every year to the winner of the Civil War.
The n c A a rivalry football game held between
the Saintly, Beautiful and Awesome University of Oregon Ducks in
(27:28):
the Evil, Ugly Vile Oregon State Beavers. Because the two
team maskets are the Dusk, the ducks and the beavers.
Someone carved a beautiful wooden platypus that is now used
as the trophy pome. Well that is pretty awesome. Yeah yeah,
because it's kind of not really but it's sort of thematic. Yeah,
nicely done, thanks er. Yeah. So, um hey, if you
(27:51):
guys want to share anything with us, you can first
of all find us on Twitter, Facebook. We are blow
the Mind on both of those and uh we populate
bocos fees with all sorts of cool links and thoughts
and uh and you know stuff about our upcoming episodes,
and you can always drop us a line at Blow
the Mind at how stuff works dot com. Be sure
(28:16):
to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
Stuff To Blow Your Mind News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Lamb
Joe McCormick
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.