Posted on 02/02/2012 10:49:53 AM PST by Nachum
f the soldier-like perfection of the synchronized formation by these mini drones doesn’t freak you out a bit — their collective buzzing sure will.
Orchestrated by the GRASP Lab at the University of Pennsylvania, these 20 “nano quadrotors” developed by KMel Robotics seem to, as Popular Science describes, sense each other’s proximity and work together to maintain formation “like a hive of bees moving en masse.”
Watch the drone swarm in varying formations and with obstacles (Note: Hold out for the figure eight at 1:27):
(Excerpt) Read more at theblaze.com ...
Anyone that thinks the makers/operators/controllers of this stuff has the edge has never seen death up close and personal. That stuff doesn’t save them.
bflv
They will have to shift to a non-metallic fabrication in order to make this an effective weapon.
A magnetic field could neutralize a metallic swarm, for example.
Another means of neutralization would be an RF jammer, like a ‘Mr. Wizard’ like device that troops in Iraq used to use to detonate IED’s.
Using this for surveillance or biowarfare would be an excellent principle use, however.
Essentially, this would be active vectoring of an agent or device against a target.
This could revolutionize assassination of high value targets.
One of the issues would be self-destruction. The nano-bot would ideally be consumed chemically on contact with skin or a mucous membrane. It wouldn’t matter that the biological agent were present as long as the vectoring bot were gone.
If you made these slightly radioactive, you could attach these bots to a car, or to a person, and track the low-level radiation signature by satellite, perhaps even through most residential and commercial construction. A bunker may shield enough signature to mask it.
The other aspect of this is that you could precisely measure the radiological signature AND quantity such that it would be tough to decoy and divert once you’ve attached the swarm to a target.
This would also NOT be caught by current bug detection countermeasures, but it would be caught by a Geiger counter, though using a Geiger counter isn’t currently something used in sweeping.
You could only use this radiological tracking bit for a while before you could use the same technology to track swarms remotely.
Fans, a pool of water, a storm, and other things would make trouble for something like this.
If they’re living and working on a closed base 20 miles into the desert from Las Vegas (or anyplace remote and secure), it might be hard to reach them there.
Of course, if they were living off base, that might be different.
(Lol, I hope that's not what you sign)
They look like a blade mqx to me, but with a computer controlling the en masse.
Whatever rolls your socks up and down.
And I might add that I've had drones, including hunter-killer sniper drones, and drones controlled by rebels, in all of my books except the first from 2002. http://www.enemiesforeignanddomestic.com/index.htm
Imagine a swarm of nanobots the size of flies, each one having a little stinger containing a drop of some powerful neurotoxin or hallucinogenic, perhaps controlled by a pigeon-sized "mother-ship".
That’s cool! You should know how anyways. But one thing I can bring to ya that might not be easy to acquire on your own is a security sweep. I’ll do that free cuz you are good people.
The equipment and personnel have to get there somehow and re-supply and parts, too. They also can’t do anything but the largest of UAVs from a distance. As I have said before, we built those technologies, we know how to keep them from being used against us.
Visualize the nanobot-equivalent of an aircraft carrier, something about a foot to a couple yard long. It would fly, crawl, or burrow to within range of the target, then release the nanobots, meanwhile providing them with communications-relay and maybe extra compute-power.
We built the technology of the airplane, but that didn't stop it from being used against us on Dec 7, 1941 or Sept 11 2001.
The Chinese are not technologically backwards, and will likely sell kits to people hostile to us.
Flyswatter? Or, badminton racket?
“We built the technology of the airplane, but that didn’t stop it from being used against us on Dec 7, 1941 or Sept 11 2001.”
Really? The rest of the war we did pretty damned good against that technology.
Just because someone uses a technology once to success does not mean they are not deprived of it the next time.
I thought the smiley face formation at the very end was pretty cool too.
or self replicating atomic scale nanobots that feed on the silicone found in computer chips and the residual energy found inside nuclear warheads. someday.
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