Dragonfly-Sized Insect Spies Spotted, Denied 433
SRA8 sends in a Washington Post piece about work at various academic, government, and military labs on insect-sized flying spies. A number of people reported what appeared to be flying mechanical insects, larger than dragonflies, over an antiwar rally in Washington DC last month. The reporter got mostly no-comments from the agencies he called trying to pin down what it was they saw. Only the FBI said through a spokesman: "We don't have anything like that." The article describes work on insect cyborgs as well as purely mechanical flying spies, but quotes vice admiral Joe Dyer, former commander of the Naval Air Systems Command now at iRobot in Burlington, Mass., as follows: "I'll be seriously dead before that program deploys." The article also mentions an International Symposium on Flying Insects and Robots, held in Switzerland in August, at which Japanese researchers demonstrated radio-controlled fliers with four-inch wingspans that resemble hawk moths.
Nothing to see (Score:2)
Hmmmmmm...
Re:Nothing to see (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nothing to see (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nothing to see (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh yeah, cos phone cameras are, like, 2,000 times better resolution then my eyes.
Honestly, in most photos taken on phones you can barely make out a face, let alone a dragon fly at 20 meters.
duh.
Re:Nothing to see (Score:5, Funny)
How many in focus "UFO" photos have you seen? Having a photo that's blurry just sweetens the deal for the tin foil hat crowd. Then they can tell you all the things "you would have seen it in detail just like I'm describing if you were there, you just can't make it out in the picture. Damn cheap camera!" It gives them something semi-tangible, yet open to interpretation.
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Have you ever tried to take a picture of a dragonfly, in flight, with the camera on your mobile?
Re:Nothing to see (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Nothing to see (Score:5, Informative)
First you have to find the little fellow in the viewfinder/LCD This is hard, because at wide-angle you'll have trouble seeing it, and at tele you'll have trouble finding it (since your FOV is so limited). If you're good and have one of those little electronic viewfinders, you can track the bug with one eye and look through the viewfinder with the other while operating your zoom ring/switch/whatever you have.
Then you've got to keep the erratically-flying little fellow in the frame while waiting on your AF to lock on. Lots of digital cameras with long zooms have issues with slow focus at the long end. Panasonic's FZ series has much faster focus at the long end but, when using the "high-speed focus" mode, the viewfinder is frozen so you might have trouble tracking.
You're probably better off using one of a variety of prefocus tricks.
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1. A dragonfly has 350 degrees of vision -- a 10 degree blind spot is directly behind its tail.
2. (1), along with some neat nervous-system wiring enables dragonflies to "disappear" in plain sight -- they track eye movements of their prey, and stay in the prey's "blind spot".
The result is that prefocus tricks don't work all that well on dragonflies.
Now, a camera doesn't have a blind spot, so using a camera t
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Re:Nothing to see (Score:4, Funny)
Ok, so, next time you have a 'rally' that might attract this kind of attention, make sure to hang up a bunch of Shell No-Pest Strips all over the place.
I"m sure you'll catch some of the culprits that way.
Re:Nothing to see (Score:5, Insightful)
One nut case in a group of protesters that are sure that.
1. Each and every one of them is SO important to the peace movement that there is a whole team dedicated to watching there every move.
2. The government is just one step away from throwing them into a re eduction camp.
3. That the government not only has the technology to build robot bug but also cars that get 300 MPG an run on water.
Finally why would they use them over of all things an anti-war protest?
I mean if you want to spy on them you send in agents with small cameras and MK1 eyeballs and ears. It would be cheaper and far more effective.
If you wanted to test them then a better test would be over a military base or exercise. You would be trying to defeat trained observers then.
If you wanted to test them with untrained observers in the wild then just about any sporting event right down to a high school football game would do and again be less likely to end up in the Washington Post. Test it in Iowa or any of the other "fly over" states that the Post doesn't know exists.
So it comes down to these two options.
a. The government of the US can create almost magical technology and then is stupid enough to use it in this manner.
or
b. Someone at a anti-war protest thinks they see robotic spy bug and tells other like minded people that they saw a spy bug who are then sure they saw a spy bug......
Re:Nothing to see (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they just figure that getting caught taking secret pictures of a hairy anti-war protester is going to be less damaging to their career than getting caught taking secret pictures of a leather boy in assless chaps at the annual gay pride parade.
Re:Nothing to see (Score:5, Funny)
In unrelated news, Joe Dyer has been found dead in an alley. Here's tom with the weather.
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Why waste it on protestors? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why waste it on protestors? (Score:4, Insightful)
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You have hardly provided any evidence to back that up. Military use in military areas ain't protests. Tasers [taser.com] were developed by a NASA guy and their development and history also do not fit your previous claim. So, you have not supported your earlier assertion. Google away, but next time support what you claimed.
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I mean, it's not like a country would ever use technology such as this to control its own populace... right?
That'd be just... silly, right?
Re:Why waste it on protestors? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know if the 9/11 hijackers used fake IDs (I thought they just used student Visas and such), but I'm pretty sure it would have been irrelevant if they had done so, since it's not like they'd have been stopped from boarding the airplane.
Regardless, take off the damn tinfoil hat, it makes you look stupid.
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Re:Why waste it on protestors? (Score:5, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why waste it on protestors? (Score:4, Informative)
One of them (Mohammed Atta) had his driving licence revoked
It was in his real name with his real current address and he was known to the CIA?
There is a widespread myth that the hijackers were in the USA illegally (there were not) that they had forged documents (mostly they didn't), that they smuggled weapons on board (they went through the laughable airport security without guns but with knives) that they were Iranian/Iraqi (they were mostly Saudis)
Some of the terrorists spent time learning to fly in the USA before 9/11 and mostly they lived openly under their real names and did nothing to hide themselves
Re:Why waste it on protestors? (Score:5, Funny)
for testing (Score:2)
Re:Why waste it on protestors? (Score:5)
The FBI was dumb enough to waste resources spying on:
John Kerry a future US senator.
John Lennon a drug addict who was possibly mentally ill.
Coretta Scott King the wife of civil rights leader MLK.
This is just a small sample of the people they wasted tax payer money spying on unnecessarily.
The FBI wastes resources all of the time the same way any government organization does.
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The thought was not quite finished (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The thought was not quite finished (Score:5, Funny)
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That's what we need (Score:5, Funny)
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robotic insectoid black micro helicopters!
/* puts on his tin-foil head */
/*screams*/ with frickin' laser beams [thinkgeek.com] ...aaaaah!
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Yeah, I was thinking of those too.
I actually bought a couple, and they're a hoot to play with. Small enough to fit on the palm of my hand, and have enough battery for about 10 minutes of flight before recharging. Replacement copters cost AU25.00, so they're easily cheap enough to be disposable in the context of intel gathering.
The downside of the ones I have are that they're barely controllable in still air, and so light that any sort of wind would make them u
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Grain of NaCl (Score:5, Insightful)
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*cough*
They're just crying for attention.
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He hasn't admitted authorizing spying on U.S. Citizens [cnn.com] in the past or anything. Those anti-war people are clearly paying attention to those pesky "facts" again.
If you start calling another crowd "anti-war", doesn't that mean you're "pro-war"? What kind of babbling idiot is pro-war?
Re:Grain of NaCl (Score:4, Funny)
I wonder at the mindset of the people complaining.
"Hey, let's all get together in some big mob in a public area with big signs and shout collective messages! Yeah! Let's do it!"
20 seconds later...
"Man, I think we're being spied on." "Really?" "Yeah, check out those low-flying insects... probably robots or something." "QMGZ, you're right! The government is watching us! Our cleverly concealed group of hundreds of protestors has been outed to the man!"
Anyway, I thought we'd already pinned squirrels [google.com] as the chief liaisons of CIA spy programs. Doesn't a jump straight from squirrel to fly violate Moore's law?
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...what if he's not real?!
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Which is a good thing to remember the next "atrocity" commited by, oh I don't know, Bush, Marine, Israeli soldier, republican senator, what have you
Doubt it (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Doubt it (Score:5, Informative)
Not it wasn't.
In the 1960s and 70s spy sats still dropped film back to earth using a parachute because they didn't have high the digital imaging that you can find in the average digital camera. Nuclear submarines would have killed for the computing power found in a Pentium 66.
So yes you are coming off as paranoid.
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Something this small and light would be subject to the vagaries of the
Power source (Score:3, Insightful)
The device is, of course, a common dragonfly.
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The larger problem is the payload. RF technology is small these days, but it
Oblig. (Score:5, Funny)
Doubtful, but if it *is* true . . . (Score:2)
. . . then I'd be seriously upset with the government for holding back such a revolutionary energy storage technology, yet impressed they're able to keep it away from the general market where it would be worth trillions.
As I've said before, building a robotic insect with cameras, transmitters, and capable of flight is well within our technical capabilities. Stuffing in a battery with enough juice to make it at all useful is not.
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I've seen people make some "micro" model planes that fit in the palm of their hands, and thes
Huge issues.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Batteries - this would be very difficult to make work for a long time when it has to fly by way of flapping wings!
Control system - Airplanes are *relatively* easy to make a control system for, because they're well studied and time tested(and even this is hard and requires pounds upon pounds of circuitry (yes, the redundancy isn't necessary for a spy bug, but even the smallest processors/accelerometers/gyroscopes weigh more than a fsking bug!). A robot with flapping wings we don't understand well on the original nature-made product? not happening yet!
Reproducing a convincing style of flight
When someone caught/"killed" one, the jig would be up!
What's much more likely is if your "men in black" were to use the hundreds of *readily available* security cameras mounted.... everywhere....
Besides, if it is a protest, what are you hiding? You are OUTSIDE. You are making your desires VISIBLE for the reason of convincing others to take them! you are not in a back room being all clandestine. You want people to see you!
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Regarding your poin
Power (Score:2)
Of course you'd still need to power the electronics, and that wo
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That said, I've already mentioned elsewhere that I've seen model airplanes as small as a person's hand, made by hobbyists. Creating a "fixed wing" aircraft that moves fast enough and is small enough for people to think they saw a moth or dragonfly (whose wings you don't really see clearly during fl
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This is probably the better point. Sure, flying cameras disguised as insects are cool in science fiction stories, but when you consider that not only would the government essentially be spending a zillion dollars to build something that would inevitably break in public and get everyone fired in a huge scandal, they'd also be spending that money to avoid using
video link is of an unrelated demo (Score:5, Insightful)
Why no pics? (Score:2)
I was at that march... (Score:5, Funny)
If these exist.. (Score:5, Funny)
My kingdom! (Score:2)
it's just danny dunn (Score:5, Informative)
Cute, but no.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Cute, but no.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Not without adding light weight peizo gyroscpoes [gyroscope.com] (typically only used for yaw compensation in RC helicopters). If you've got the budget and the time - *cough* DHS *cough*, then something like this is not beyond todays tech.
Two issues I see are (1)flight time (battery drain especially when transmitting video from the object), and (2)control distance. If
Hehe (Score:2)
Listen up...! (Score:2)
The red-dot acid being passed around is B A D - avoid the red-dot acid!
It's a bummer, I know - just don't use it, ok...? Try the blue, I guess. Now, back to the show...
Since they don't exist (Score:2)
these bugs eat aluminum (Score:2)
the illuminati engineered the bugs that way, because they know us wise tinfoil hat wearers are the last bulwarks of fact standing between them and complete world domination
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Symposium (Score:4, Informative)
Insect size flapping MAV (Japan): http://www.fit.ac.jp/~y-kawa/ [fit.ac.jp]
Why not protestors? (Score:2)
Toy (Score:2)
Someone could have been flying these over the crowd.
These Have Been Around Since 70's (Score:5, Informative)
"Developed by CIA's Office of Research and Development in the 1970's, this micro-UAV was the first flight of an insect-sized vehicle (insectothopter). It was intended to prove the concept of such miniaturized platforms for intelligence collection. Insectothopter had a miniature engine to move the wings up and down. A small amount of gas was used to drive the engine, and the excess was vented out the rear for extra thrust. The flight tests were impressive. However, control in any kind of crosswind proved too difficult."
Once again Im not saying these were used to spy on protesters, but I know people are going to be like "there is no such thing like this out there...." So I figured I would add in some info to show that this type of tech did exist.
We may already be beyond that (Score:4, Informative)
He goes on to mention that this technology, being 40-years old, "pales in comparison" to what they have today.
You can view these pages for free at Amazon [amazon.com]. Search inside the book for "dragonfly" and they'll come right up. It wouldn't let me direct link to the pages.
Charlie Jade (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, I haven't seen it in a while now, so I may be a bit off with that explanation.
Quite an interesting show, despite the slow start.
From an old TV episode of "Get Smart": (Score:2)
obviously a dumb story (Score:5, Informative)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=jvWgeVUqlII [youtube.com]
http://youtube.com/watch?v=f04Jf3mnGAU&mode=related&search=spy%20drone%20police%20big%20brother [youtube.com]
The picture quality from these drones is simply amazing. The small size means that they're very likely to escape notice from people on the ground. One of the spy drone models I've seen is a four rotor copter running off of battery with a 2.5 hour air time. Longer-haul drones are fixed wing and can stay on station for longer. These little drones are astounding. They can get a line of sight on a second floor window from a few miles away and zoom in until you feel like you're peeking in from a ladder outside. The gyroscopic stabilization means that the images remain clear and useful.
In conjunction with the air vehicles, I'm sure there's probably work going on with vermin-sized spy vehicles, something rat-like. Small enough to penetrate buildings and go unnoticed. Rather than relying on agents to covertly break into locations and install bugs, send in a "rat." If you lose it, no big deal, it's not like one of your agents was killed. Note: I don't have a link for this since I haven't seen it discussed anywhere but it seems like too obvious of an idea, someone has to be working on it somewhere.
Right now we are seeing a huge transition for drones, moving from the era of being remotely piloted aircraft to autonomous robotic aircraft. The Fire Scout the Navy is working on is completely computer-controlled, the only joysticks on the ground equipment are for directing the cameras.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZSok1JRWbu0 [youtube.com]
I've read about what the scout drones can do for warfare and its revolutionary. Field commanders can get a view of the battlefield that is something you'd expect from a video game, eye in the sky, spying on enemy positions, all of the information relayed to a tactical plot in real-time. Avionics designers have been talking about sensory overload for a long time, the problem where a pilot can have more geegaws and doodads feeding him information than he can deal with at one time. That was the reason why interceptors like the F-14 and F-4 had a dedicated radar operator in addition to the pilot. That's also the reason why a guy-in-back was added to some models of the F-15. With more advanced systems fusing the streams of information into consolidated displays, one pilot can keep up with all of the information. That's why the Apache flies with a pilot and gunner but the canceled Comanche only had a single pilot.
This same process is going to be going on in the army general's command post. And with how bloody cheap technology is getting, you can well imagine the same thing will be happening for the third world military and insurgents as well.
Occam's Razor... (Score:5, Insightful)
Think rationally for a minute. What benefit can a supposed micro-UAV provide in this kind of gathering? Why on earth would the US Government "out" itself in a situation like this? Any halfway intelligent spy agency (as I believe ours ARE, regardless of any opinions about their oversight) would hold technology like this for really really really important, and otherwise impossible to penetrate, situations, and especially situations where the technology would not be seen (like nighttime).
Think about it. Big gathering. Public place. Plenty of surrounding buildings. No limits on attendance. Hundreds of people waving around cell phone cameras. Recording devices allowed in the area. If you want pictures of who's there, just pretend you're a protester really happy about the size of the crowd, and wander around like an idiot with your (looks like a) $50 CVS disposable video camera, blatantly taking pictures of everything and everyone in sight. You'll get much closer, more stable, clearer pictures, and nobody is the wiser. Why try to hide?
This doesn't pass the basic sniff test. Not many conspiracy theories do, when you really think about them rationally.
I'm a geocacher, and I like to hunt "urban micro" caches - tiny containers hidden in highly-trafficked areas. Hunting for them is not unlike being a spy, I think, and I've found that trying to sneak is very ineffective. If you look like everyone else, and act like everyone else, you can hide your actions a LOT better than if you LOOK like you're trying to hide. Same thing here: it makes a lot more sense to blend in, than try some super-fancy new technology which WILL be noticed.
Incidentally, I am NOT denying these things might exist. But I am pretty certain that if they are being used, it's in much more carefully and wisely chosen scenarios.
Washingotn Post or World Weekly News? (Score:2)
Current Micro-Flyer Tech (Score:2)
Some of the micro-flyer tech. from the noted Flying Insects and Robots Symposium [fir.epfl.ch] is pretty slick as well. I especially like the Flapping-Wing MAV with a single fixed wing and dual flappers than creates a pseudo-ground effect to fl
Flying mechanical insects? (Score:2)
R/C ornithopters are available. (Score:5, Interesting)
R/C ornithopters aren't that rare any more. Check out this video [youtube.com] of the CyBird, which is pigeon-sized and battery powered. The video shows four minutes of aggressive aerobatics; it can be flown longer if you spend more time gliding. This thing costs $149.
Smaller ones are available. The dragonfly-sized ones are usually flown indoors, but if winds are low, they can be used outdoors.
So it could either be some Government agency watching, or somebody in the crowd with an R/C toy.
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Re:YRO? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Was this Burma or USA? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Was this Burma or USA? (Score:5, Insightful)
My guess is that some unfortunate people got some of the brown acid...
Yay! They're Watching! (Score:2)
It may be creepy, but it is a clear sign that a protest rally is starting to work. Someone noticed, got nervous, and sent spies.
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I only ask, because I've never seen such an ad, and if it's real I want to buy one.