Lifeboat Foundation

China’s PLA, or People’s Liberation Army, is actively trying to make advances in military robotics and unmanned systems. It now has a range of unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, in use across its army, navy, air force and rocket force – the military’s strategic and tactical missiles unit. Here are some of them.

The PLA ground force has a number of UAVs that are primarily smaller, more tactical models and are often used for battlefield reconnaissance and targeting artillery fire to improve precision strikes. A significant proportion of these are part of a series produced by the Xian Aisheng Technology Group. The fixed-wing drones have a conventional design with a mid-wing configuration and are used to support the artillery.

The navy generally uses smaller, tactical drones but it also has a limited number of sophisticated reconnaissance UAVs, notably this medium-altitude, long-endurance model. Roughly comparable to the US Global Hawk, it has a maximum range of 2,400km and a maximum endurance of 40 hours. It has been operating in the vicinity of the East China Sea since at least 2013 and there were also reports in 2016 that it had been deployed to Woody Island in the South China Sea – both disputed territories.

Continue reading “The drones that have become part of China’s military strategy” »

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An AI is set to try and work out how a potentially limitless supply of energy can be used on Earth.

It could finally solve the mysteries of fusion power, letting researchers capture and control the process that powers the sun and stars.

Continue reading “The AI that could help make limitless fusion power a reality: Supercomputer set to try and work out how to harness the energy of the sun” »

Semi-autonomous driving systems are designed to ignore unmoving obstacles because otherwise, they couldn’t work at all.

https://paper.li/e-1437691924#/

The old boundaries of the human self are being blurred by technology. The risks are real, but the potential is astounding.

GENEVA (AP) — Experts from scores of countries are meeting to discuss ways to define and deal with “killer robots” — futuristic weapons systems that could conduct war without human intervention.

The weeklong gathering is the second this year at U.N. offices in Geneva to focus on such lethal autonomous weapons systems and explore ways of possibly regulating them, among other issues.

Some top advocacy groups say governments and militaries should be prevented from developing such systems, which have sparked fears and led some critics to envisage harrowing scenarios about their use.

Lionfish are threats to not only fragile coral reef ecosystems, but the divers who keep them in check. They not only take advantage of unsuspecting fish populations, but carry poisonous spines that make them challenging to catch. Student researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute may have a solution: robotic guardians. They’ve crafted an autonomous robot (below) that can hunt lionfish without requiring a tethered operator that could harm the reefs.

The bot attaches to an existing submersible robot and relies on computer vision (trained with thousands of photos) to spot examples of the invasive species and jab them with one of its eight spears. Each spear tip is detachable and buoyant, so any successful kill sends the fish to the surface. The machine is well-suited to the realities of the ocean, too — it’s both resistant to saltwater corrosion and uses an airtight chamber to maintain buoyancy after every spear use.

WPI’s automaton isn’t ready for service yet. A follow-up group of students will work on a navigation system that can help the robot create a 3D search grid. If that’s successful, though, the robot could become a valuable part of reef defense that spares humans from getting involved until (and unless) they have no other choice.

Nonetheless, the Pentagon appears to be pushing ahead on its own, looking for ways to strengthen its ties with A.I. researchers, particularly in Silicon Valley, where there is considerable wariness about working with the military and intelligence agencies.

The Defense Department, believing that A.I. research should be a national priority, has called on the White House to “inspire a whole of country effort.”

China has announced an unmanned police station will soon be put into use.” The station will provide numerous driver and vehicle related services via AI.