Drone Autonomy (2021)(cggonzalez.com) |
Drone Autonomy (2021)(cggonzalez.com) |
Btw, I did really enjoy the graphic sumarising Control Theory. I'd criticise the lack of Planning and Scheduling, i.e. the PDDL-based symbolic AI stuff which is the technology that works best and is used e.g. by NASA on Perseverance, but OK, there's basically three communities that attack the same problem from different angles: Model Predictive Control, Planning & Scheduling, and RL. Two out of three is not too bad (but I don't see how RL goes under CT; never mind).
There are huge developments in automation happening and are being used right now.
Is this really true. My (admittedly) naive understanding was that in a first phase radio remote controlled drones were used. Then jamming became widespread and they tried to counteract with fiber-optic drones but they never caught on.
I thought that since we see more drones then ever now it must be a hint that most of them must autonomous to some degree now.
https://www.nbcnews.com/world/lebanon/hezbollah-adopts-new-w...
Also useful is Steve Brunton's channel [3]. He has a freely available book [4] co-authored with Nathan Kutz that ties machine learning and control.
[1] https://engineeringmedia.com/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/@BrianBDouglas [3] https://www.youtube.com/@Eigensteve [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36374528
That's where the sign in request is coming from
I remember thinking it was a stupid idea to embed third party hosted JS back when jquery and prototypejs were the duopoly of javascript. I'm surprised it took me this long to see it.
Also, to my understanding, jamming works best against smaller, First Person View quadcopter-style drones that have a limited range and carry only limited firepower (e.g. one grenade basically) and are often used against personnel and armor.
Longer-range and better armed drones, like the US's Predators that can launch missiles, or Iran's Sahel drones that attack targets thousands of Kms away, fly at much greater heights and are -again, AFAICT- harder to jam, although I am saying this with some uncertainty.
In any case, I believe hkpack's comment above that Ukrainians have private tech that the world doesn't know about doesn't stand to reason. If any party had such tech, it would be the US, China, or possibly Israel, with Russia a distant second possibility. Ukrainians are not known for their AI output, to say the least. And we're talking here about major breakthroughs needed to endow drones with true autonomy, breakthroughs that require scientific advances and not just technological tweaks and R&D.
Also, if there was really useful drone autonomy, it would have now spread like wildfire in every possible theater. Despite a few announcements that this or that party (e.g. Turkey, last year) has used autonomous drones in a real combat situation, there is no shortage of real combat situations and yet there are no autonomous drones to be seen on any battlefield.
Finally, any side with autonomous killer robots would advertise their existence to high heaven. Half of the effect is the ability of such a weapon to cause terror to the enemy. Why keep quiet about it? The enemy already has samples of your tech, that's the only thing certain in modern warfare; you're not keeping any secrets that way.
Predators are a whole different beast. They are semi-autonomous airplanes, that can be controlled by satellite or AWAC or whatever. Almost certainly with the ability to loiter or escape if they lose contact with their controllers
As I like to say of course, self-guided missiles are arguably autonomous; but that's just because their whole job is to reach a target while causing maximum damage on hit. That removes many of the requirements of other "autonomous" systems (e.g. self-driving cars).
P.S. I honestly don't know much about Predators but I expect they're going to have the most advanced features available.