Drone Autonomy (2021)
cggonzalez.comThis is a great introduction to all the technology that people have developed over the years (since the 1970's!) to make robots autonomous, that, unfortunately, have never quite worked. As I like to point out, if we knew how to make drones (or any kind of robot) really, actually autonomous you'd see them used first of all in Ukraine, and recently in Lebanon. You don't, all the drones used in warfare are remote-controlled. Autonomy doesn't work yet. Not well enough to deploy in a theater of war.
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).
Not everything Ukraine uses is public knowledge.
There are huge developments in automation happening and are being used right now.
What are those huge developments? Can you explain?
"You don't, all the drones used in warfare are remote-controlled."
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.
The fiber optic drones caught on so well that they are now used by Hezbollah in Lebanon. For example, see:
https://www.nbcnews.com/world/lebanon/hezbollah-adopts-new-w...
Just to add to this, radio-controlled drones are also still used, it's just that those are relatively easy to jam while the fiber-optic ones aren't and that makes them very difficult to defend against.
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.
My understanding of the Shahed's is that they are relatively simple. They can be programmed with a certain destination and then have some basic image recognition that allows them to "choose" exactly their target based on computer vision, e.g. the shape of a building or radar station. So in that sense, they are autonomous. To my mind, they are more cheap precision missiles (more like a tomahawk) than an autonomous drone.
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
Shaheds (some models) have loitering ability, and other "autonomy" features. Tbh the term is as fuzzy as "AGI" or "self-driving" these days because there are a bunch of automatisms that a drone can have that are often labelled so. However, an autonomous system should do much more than go to a designated location and fire at a target that looks like it might be the designated target. I mean to say, pathfinding and image recognition do not autonomy make; or they shouldn't be said to anyway.
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.
Oops. Iran's Shahed drones, not "Sahel" (which is a region in Africa).
It does not seem that the author cites the source of the control theory map. It was created by Brian Douglas [1], an engineer whose YouTube videos [2] are great for learning core topics.
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
The fact that people just make this stuff and make it available to others is the most amazing thing about the internet (and the people on it).
Keeps asking me to sign in?
It uses polyfill.io which is no longer active and has been taken over by malicious actors.
That's where the sign in request is coming from
Somehow this is only the first time I have seen this vector taken advantage of with my own eyes.
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.
I’m not seeing this? Has it been fixed?
Click on any of the blog entries.
hmm, maybe brave is blocking it.
Crash course?