/ News
iRobot Founder Now Building Tiny Hovering Drone Spies
Four years ago, iRobot co-founder Helen Greiner stepped down from the company she helped turn into an all-important supplier of the military’s growing arsenal of ground robots. Now today, she’s unveiled the first ‘bots to roll off her new company’s assembly line. What are they? Teeny tiny hovering drones, designed to fly through your window and spy on you.
That’s just one of two robots revealed so far from Massachusetts company CyPhy Works, founded by Greiner after leaving iRobot. We’ve also now got a sense of what Greiner’s been developing for the past couple of years.
The first is Ease, or “Extreme Access System for Entry.” Really, it’s a tiny hover-bot designed for “intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.” And it’s small enough — it only has a 1-foot diameter and a height of 16 inches from top to bottom – to fly through windows and maneuver through buildings with its ducted fan engine. In a video released by the company, the Ease can be seen hovering through an abandoned-looking building to a psychedelic funk soundtrack. It can also theoretically stay in the air forever.
“Being able to stay up aloft without constant interruptions to come down and recharge is a critical new capability,” Greiner tells Danger Room. “And with locations where you don’t have a lot of infrastructure.”
The reason is that instead of communicating wirelessly, the drone receives instructions and power through a microfilament cord of spooled copper the width of a fishing line and connected to the robot’s ground control station. And because it’s plugged in directly, the Ease drone should be harder to hack than other drones.
Once launched, a single battery at the ground station can also keep the drone up for 50 minutes, but this could be extended indefinitely by hot-swapping batteries at the control station. And as it is, most small drones that go wireless can’t stay up for very long, because “people have [started] putting more and more sensors and payloads onto them,” Greiner says, which drags on the power supply.
And while the operators are swapping out the batteries, Ease is scanning everything it sees with two high-def cameras and a third, albeit optional, thermal camera. Another purported advantage of the microfilament line is that the operator doesn’t have to worry about losing a wireless signal, say, if the robot moves behind a brick wall. And since the drone is moving in potentially close quarters to obstacles and people, “you really want to make it safe” by using a ducted fan, she says.
The other new drone is the Parc, or “Persistent Aerial Reconnaissance and Communications.” Like Ease, it also hovers. But the Parc is designed to fly high and for long periods of time, and resembles a flying bug with four skinny legs and a quadrotor. The robot can hover at 1,000 feet while being powered — like the Ease — by a microfilament line.
And while it’s up there, Parc can carry out “persistent stare capabilities” for up to 12 hours at a time (on one battery) while packing two cameras, one in high-def and another in thermal. And it has night vision and “flies itself.” (Oh great.) The military is reportedly interested.
There’s no word if CyPhy Works has received any orders yet, though. These drones are still prototypes. But it’s probably not far off. The Boston Globe‘s Scott Kirsner estimated the company’s investor funding at $3 million, “much of it from Cambridge-based [venture capital] firm General Catalyst.” But Kirsner also notes that the company has received millions more in federal grants. Which could make those tiny hover ‘bots begin flying into houses and spying on you from above sometime soon.
Source: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/12/cyphy/
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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