I was just thinking about the Aerial Atom

in short - yes. though the X-47B is unmanned, it is not a drone. instead, it’s an autonomous aerial vehicle, which means that it flies missions according to pre-programmed instructions rather than being under constant control by a ground-based pilot. this first-ever arrested landing was the highlight of three months of shore-based carrier testing, which included precision approaches, touch-and-go landings, and precision landings

1.8 gigapixel ARGUS-IS. World's highest resolution video surviellience platform by DARPA.
1 million terabytes a day saved forever.

The ARGUS array is made up of several cameras and other types of imaging systems. The output of the imaging system is used to create extremely large, 1.8GP high-resolution mosaic images and video.

The U.S. Army, along with
Boeing, has developed and is preparing to deploy a new unmanned aircraft
called the “Hummingbird.” It’s is a VTOL-UAS (vertical take-off and
landing unmanned aerial system). Three of them are being deployed to
Afghanistan for a full year to survey and spy on Afghanistan from an
altitude of 20,000 feet with the ability to scan 25 square miles of
ground surface.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e95_1359267780

the equivalent of 100 predator drones looking at one place AT ONCE ... hahah they stole my idea

Pink..... Beautiful Love Song with Sensuous Aerial Work has been added as a related post - related requested by bareboards2.

*related=Pink..... Beautiful Love Song with Sensuous Aerial Work

Amazing. She is amazing.

I wonder if aerial imaging is an option.

If scientists can predict the count, mass and orbit shapes of planets as they circle a distant star purely through slight shimmers in a blurry image. Surely there'd be an anomaly in some level of the visual spectrum where aerial imaging could detect a difference.

>> ^grinter:

Couldn't each ground unit just flash with a unique id code? ...and couldn't each instruction from the aerial unit then use a coded prefix to direct individual ground units? ...and couldn't that happen on the millisecond time scale?
The disco lights don't seem very efficient?


The problem is that the "skybot/drone" is using a relatively inexpensive webcam. These things don't have a very good framerate, and there are a lot of factors that ccould drop frames. If any frame is dropped, then it would misinterpret the "ID" of the ground robot. A webcam is good at discerning red vs. green vs. blue. Something that is faster- IR from a TV remote- has the problem of being non-dimensional, so the drone wouldn't know which ground robot was "talking". Something that might be neat would be the 2D IR sensor from a WiiMote, but I'm not sure what kind of framerate those are capable of.

Also, adding extra sensors to the drone, or getting better ones, or using a faster cpu, would not only increase cost, but more importantly decrease battery life of the drone.

Probably the speed of the LED blinking identification was slowed down for this demo, so it could be explained to the viewers. It's likely capable of going much faster.

The main problem I see in "real world" application is daylight - if it's bright outside, it's much harder to discern color. But at least if our robot overlords attack at night, we'll see them coming in rainbow glory!

Couldn't each ground unit just flash with a unique id code? ...and couldn't each instruction from the aerial unit then use a coded prefix to direct individual ground units? ...and couldn't that happen on the millisecond time scale?
The disco lights don't seem very efficient?

Flying devil rays? Quite cool. *Timeshifted flying with pelicans? WAY cool.

I need to seek out this Earth Flight programme. According to the BBC website:

Spycams film right in the heart of the flock with microlights, hang-gliders and wirecams making up the aerial filming arsenal.

Or posting it on videosift for that matter.

In reply to this comment by EMPIRE:
wait... wait.... this is being shot from a helicopter? wtf? Who in their right mind thinks this story is interesting or relevant enough to justify having aerial shots?

Here's everything that should have been said or done with this story (maybe with a single picture to go along with the story):

"A cat was stuck on top of a cactus for 3 days, and finally came down on his own".

wait... wait.... this is being shot from a helicopter? wtf? Who in their right mind thinks this story is interesting or relevant enough to justify having aerial shots?

Here's everything that should have been said or done with this story (maybe with a single picture to go along with the story):

"A cat was stuck on top of a cactus for 3 days, and finally came down on his own".

It certainly rulz over "our" aerial fireworks vid....

In reply to this comment by Deano:
Thanks! Innuendo rules!

In reply to this comment by bareboards2:
*promote the editing skills!

>> ^Yogi:

>> ^bcglorf:
>> ^Yogi:
>> ^Deano:
I will say though that he's wrong to blithely dismiss the case for underlying truth. "So what" is not a reasonable response. IF it was a conspiracy born in the darkest hearts of the U.S government or some branch thereof, it would be the biggest story in modern times.

I don't think he's saying it wouldn't be a big story. I think he's saying given all the terrorism we commit around the world, this doesn't measure up and would be a mere footnote if it wasn't done to us. Because this was the one time terrorism went the other direction it's significant, other than that it wasn't really as huge of a deal as what we did to numerous countries during the 20th century.

So, America has regularly targeted civilians on purpose, and declared it a warning and magnificent act worthy of great praise?
I understood American wars and black ops to have killed a lot of civilians. I wasn't under the impression that there was wide spread practice of specifically singling out civilians for murder. Even the horrific boastful body counts of 'Nam and the carpet bombing of Cambodia had the flimsy pretense of evil done to prevent a greater evil. Which I add I condemn as one of the most evil acts done in recent history, but even that pales to what would be American officials deliberately killing everyone on 9/11 to get the policy changes they want.

Yes they deliberately ordered the attacks of "Soft Targets" in Honduras. Places like schools, hospitals, and churches but the rebel forces they trained and supported with arms. That's just one example...south and central america are littered with bodies that the US intentionally went after. Also Cambodia and Vietnam itself is a way greater crime than 9/11 ever could be. Estimates as high as 4 million dead...that's extreme.


Don't misunderstand me. I hold no argument that Cambodia and many other American atrocities were far greater crimes than 9/11.

What I am saying is from the view of an American President, killing a million people with aerial bombings in a foreign country during a war(declared or not) is one thing. Even if you did it in secret, when the secret comes out your administration might survive it by saying something about necessity. Killing 3000 American civilians, solely to trick the rest of America's civilians to support a war you want to start though, when that comes out it's worse. They are both crazy, but the important distinction is the later is also suicidal.

Which is Chomsky's point. America has done lots of horrible things, but being caught responsible for 9/11 would be far worse for the leader and party than pretty much anything in American history, ever.

9/11 may be a much lesser crime than Cambodia, but as far as picking one to be found out as responsible for, EVERY American politician will stand up and claim Cambodia as their choice before ever letting it be thought they were behind 9/11. At least Cambodia leaves the more acceptable lie of killing foreigners to protect Americans.

Done.

In reply to this comment by budzos:
Sorry to be so pedantic but this is orbital footage. Aerial footage would be from within the atmosphere. Although I'm sure everyone knows what you mean.