Lifeboat Foundation

The idea of objects seamlessly disappearing, not just in controlled laboratory environments but also in real-world scenarios, has long captured the popular imagination. This concept epitomizes the trajectory of human civilization, from primitive camouflage techniques to the sophisticated metamaterial-based cloaks of today.

Recently, this goal was further highlighted in Science, as one of the “125 questions: exploration and discovery.” Researchers from Zhejiang University have made strides in this direction by demonstrating an intelligent aero amphibious invisibility cloak. This cloak can maintain invisibility amidst dynamic environments, neutralizing external stimuli.

Despite decades of research and the emergence of numerous invisibility cloak prototypes, achieving an aero amphibious cloak capable of manipulating electromagnetic scattering in real-time against ever-changing landscapes remains a formidable challenge. The hurdles are multifaceted, ranging from the need for complex-amplitude tunable metasurfaces to the absence of intelligent algorithms capable of addressing inherent issues such as non-uniqueness and incomplete inputs.

The scientist who configured a small drone to target people with facial recognition and chase them at full speed warns we have no defenses against such weapons.

Lethal drones with facial recognition, armed robots, autonomous fighter jets: we’re at the dawn of a new age of AI-powered warfare, says technologist Alexandr Wang. He explores why data will be the secret weapon in this uncharted landscape and emphasizes the need to consider national security when developing new tech — or potentially face all-out AI warfare.

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Continue reading “War, AI and the New Global Arms Race | Alexandr Wang | TED” »

Sublette County was one of the first counties in Wyoming to add high-end drones to its law enforcement arsenal. Bingham is one of the pilots on the drone team, although he was not part of the Feb. 19 rescue.

Bingham said the drone’s thermal camera was a huge asset. The camera detected the missing woman’s heat signature in the frigid darkness with enough resolution that the woman’s body was immediately discernible from the deer nearby, which it also detected.

Continue reading “Thermal Drone Used To Save Woman Missing In Rugged Northwest Wyoming” »

General Atomics’ new air combat drone has flown, another step toward what the Air Force is calling the “first of a second generation” of autonomous aircraft.

The drone, called the XQ-67A, is derived from GA-ASI’s Gambit series of aircraft, which the company is proposing for the Air Force’s program to build robot wingmen, called collaborative combat aircraft, or CCAs.

The new platform is part of the Air Force Research Laboratory’s highly classified Off-Board Sensing Station program, or OBSS. The service awarded GA-ASI and Kratos design contracts in 2021, then picked GA-ASI to actually build the design in 2023.

She continued: “We’ve certainly had more opportunities to target in the last 60 to 90 days,” adding the US is currently looking for “an awful lot” of rocket launchers in the region.

Moore’s comments provide some of the strongest evidence to date that the US military is using AI targeting systems to identify potential strike areas. She noted that even after Google walked away from the project, experimenting has continued with drone or satellite imagery.

Based at Central Command, or Centcom headquarters in Tampa, Florida, Moore revealed that US forces in the Middle East have been testing AI targeting systems using a combination of satellites and other data sources and conducted exercises over the past year with the technology.

India’s next Mars mission could include a helicopter that follows in the footsteps of NASA’s pioneering Ingenuity drone.

India’s first-ever Mars surface mission could lift off in the early 2030s.

Recent technological advances have enabled the development of increasingly sophisticated sensors, which can help to advance the sensing capabilities of robots, drones, autonomous vehicles, and other smart systems. Many of these sensors, however, rely on individual cameras, thus the accuracy of the measurements they collect is limited by the cameras’ field of view (FOV).

Researchers at Beihang University in China recently developed a new multi-camera differential binocular vision sensor with a wider FOV that could collect more accurate measurements. This sensor, introduced in a paper published in Optics & Laser Technology, could be integrated into a wide range of devices and smart robotic systems.

“Aiming at the high-precision requirements of environment perception for unmanned aerial vehicle detection, robot navigation, and autonomous driving, inspired by the multi-camera module of mobile phones, we introduced a visual perception mode based on the principle of high-precision binocular vision measurement,” Fuqiang Zhou, co-author of the paper, told Tech Xplore. “This principle involves a central high-resolution camera and peripheral auxiliary cameras that work together.”

The UK’s high-powered DragonFire laser weapon just shot down its first drones — bringing it one step closer to the battlefield.