Hummingbird may be spying on you - new Pentagon robot drone

[RamboLiberal]

A pocket-size drone dubbed the Nano Hummingbird for the way it flaps its tiny robotic wings has been developed for the Pentagon by a Monrovia company as a mini-spy plane capable of maneuvering on the battlefield and in urban areas.

The battery-powered drone was built by AeroVironment Inc. for the Pentagon's research arm as part of a series of experiments in nanotechnology. The little flying machine is built to look like a bird for potential use in spy missions.

The results of a five-year effort to develop the drone are being announced Thursday by the company and the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Equipped with a camera, the drone can fly at speeds of up to 11 miles per hour, AeroVironment said. It can hover and fly sideways, backward and forward, as well as go clockwise and counterclockwise, by remote control for about eight minutes.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hummingbird-drone-20110217,0,2685906.story

[MadHound]

1. My first thought, TARGET PRACTICE!

Seriously officer, I thought it was a bird.

[MineralMan]

6. Hmm...you'll never see one of these in your normal activities

in your entire lifetime. Do you truly think the government is going to be flying these expensive little toys around to see what you're doing? Really?

How might they use such a thing, do you think?

Perhaps they could send them into places where people are trapped to try to find them. Maybe they could fly one to look at a bank robbery in progress to see how they could protect the customers and employees in the building. Or, maybe there's a sniper hiding somewhere, and this little mechanical bird could fly around looking for his or her exact location.

Nah...they wouldn't use these for such things, now, would they? They'll be too busy looking in your window to see what you're doing.

Feh! These little items, if they are every actually deployed, which I doubt, will be few and far between, and will be very expensive and require a trained operator, besides. They'll be used very rarely, if at all, and you'll never, ever see one.

[MadHound]

10. Well, first of all, I was trying to make a joke,

Perhaps I should use the laughing smiley next time.

Second of all, while they could very well be used for the purposes you describe (though with an eight minute flight window I doubt they'll be doing much searching for trapped people), it has become obvious over the past three decades that any sort of surveillance technology is, at some point, turned against US citizens. Cameras, scopes, bugs, what have you, have all been used to observe people who, while engaged in perfectly legal activities, are still considered subversives and enemies of the state.

But hey, if it makes you sleep at night, keep believing that these will be few, far between and used regularly. Just don't be surprised if one of these turns up outside your window the day after you've been to an anti-war protest or some such.

[MineralMan]

15. When I participate in a demonstration, the precise point is that

I'm publicly making a statement. Were I a dangerous person, you'd never see me at such a demonstration. Use reason. It is not the people who come to demonstrations the government is concerned about. It is others, who they do not see at those demonstrations. Having participated in hundreds of demonstrations, starting in 1965 in Birmingham, Alabama, I have not once been concerned about the government looking for me after I returned to my home. They saw me at the demonstration, holding my sign or shouting a slogan. I'm not hiding my opinion.

I sleep just fine at night, thanks.

[MadHound]

18. I know that, you know that,

But you're smart enough to realize that the government is paranoid enough to see you as a threat. Look at what the FBI did to King. Look at what has happened more recently as anti-war groups were filmed, bugged and infiltrated because they were deemed a threat to the state.

If you don't think that these toys won't be used in such a capacity, well, you're simply naive.

[MineralMan]

22. No, I'm not in any way naive. You don't know anything about me,

really. Dr. King was not a typical protestor. Instead, he was a national leader of that movement. He was of some interest, because of that. I stood and listened to him speak in Birmingham in 1965, along with many, many others. We were not of interest to the government in any way.

The groups you mention, one of them here in Minnesota, are also organizers, not people who show up at some rally. The government is wrong to treat them as they have, but they are not average people participating in street events.

I knew Abby Hoffman. I didn't care for him, personally, but I was around him a lot for a while. The FBI was interested in Abby Hoffman, but no record of my associating with him appeared in my FBI dossier, which I obtained years ago via the Freedom of Information Act. In fact, there wasn't a whole lot in that dossier at all, even though I was very active in the late 1960s in anti-war activities. I was in a few lists and my participation in a couple of events was noted.

Your apparent belief that the government is out looking for minor players in things is misplaced. They are not. They aren't interested in the crowd. Only in the leaders.

Today, it's laughably easy for the government to follow people's activities. Everybody communicates via their computers and other devices these days. If you're a target of some investigation, they can easily find out what they want to know. Devices like this flying bird are for other purposes, where they can't so easily do so, and for exigent circumstances, where someone needs to see something right this minute.

Beyond that, you and I simply aren't important enough to attract their attention. I know that because I see you and I typing away here on DU, expressing ourselves openly and publicly. Why would they need some sort of expensive little robotic toy to see what you were thinking. You're posting it openly right here most of the day.

Reason and logic. They're very useful tools.

[Statistical]

13. Today. Moore law is a powerful force.

That $50,000 drone will be a couple hundred dollars, be powered by solar panels in its "wings" and be semi-autonomous within a decade.

At that point why not flood a city with them. When their internal logic (running on CPU many times more powerful than exist today) find something "interesting" they send feed to an operator. A single operator wouldn't "fly" an individual drone instead it would monitor a cloud of hundreds or thousands of them working together.

[Duer 157099]

20. Bingo. There was a time when surveillance systems were thousands

and thousands.

Now you can get a whole setup for your home for a few hundred bucks at Costco.

It will not be long before these "expensive toys" become cheap toys that everybody has and deploys, even to spy on neighbors etc.

Once something becomes possible, it becomes inevitable.

[MineralMan]

2. Oh, yes...they'll be sending millions of these into people's homes

and workplaces to spy on them. That's for sure. We're all doomed.

[RamboLiberal]

3. H 'mmm - now you have me wondering about all the damn stink bugs

Maybe they are little drones.

[MineralMan]

7. Oh, they are. This mechanical hummingbird deal is just a

distraction. They've already deployed the stinkbugs. You're being watched right now by the one over there in that dark corner. Booga Booga! :rofl:

[somone]

4. Spending billions of tax dollars on new improved ways to spy on Americans

as they freeze and starve

[MineralMan]

8. There you go. That's what the government is spending money

on, for sure. What else could they possibly have to do, after all?

[XemaSab]

5. Where are they supposed to use this thing?

Hummingbirds are only found in the Americas.

[Earth_First]

9. Yup.

It's strictly a Northern & Southern American range species.

Perhaps another billion dollars in more development will create a Middle Eastern species.

[Blue Owl]

11. The last thing the Pentagon will see is Privacy Kitteh's death maw

n/t

[The Backlash Cometh]

12. No. Not my hummingbird!

This is sacrilege.

[Bonhomme Richard]

14. 8 minutes at 11 mph means it isn't going to get.....

very far from the handlers.

[MineralMan]

19. Exactly. It's role is military in nature. There's a sniper over there, or

a mortar. Let's fly the bird over and get a precise position, so we can take it out. That's the proposed use for these things. In civilian use, they would be used in similar ways, to pinpoint the position of a clear and present danger.

The paranoia about the government spying on people is just that - paranoia. If you are typing on your computer on the Internet, it's far, far easier to know what you're doing than through sending some expensive little flying robot to have a look. Logic and reason are better tools than fantasy - every time.

[hunter]

16. That thing wouldn't stand a chance against real hummingbirds.

They'd kill it as soon as they saw it. Those little guys are MEAN! I've seen them chase away hawks.

I'd love to find a dead hummingbird robot in my yard. I could repair and reprogram it for my own mischief.

[kentauros]

17. I wonder how often real birds

will snatch them out of the sky, mistaking them for an insect? :P

[Vinca]

21. Wow - I'm paranoid enough as it is. I'm still wondering what caused

my automatic garage doors to suddenly start going up and down by themselves.

[eppur_se_muova]

23. Robert Sheckley's "Watchbird" -- only a matter of time.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/29579/29579-h/29579-h.htm