Electronic Warfare Insects Coming Soon

Mike writes "British defence giant BAE Systems is creating a series of tiny electronic spiders, insects and snakes that could become the eyes and ears of soldiers on the battlefield, helping to save thousands of lives, and they claim that prototypes could be on the front line by the end of the year. A fascinating development to be sure, but who thinks this won't be misused domestically for spying and evidence gathering?" Included in the story is a link to a creepy little (scripted, rendered) demo video of these robots in action.

the video

That video that's mentioned is here [akamai.com]. This technology still relies on wireless transmission, so who ever uses it must be in relative close proximity. So when deployed, if you notice them some how, you'll know someone is near by.

Re:the video

That video that's mentioned is here. This technology still relies on wireless transmission, so who ever uses it must be in relative close proximity. So when deployed, if you notice them some how, you'll know someone is near by.

From behind the headboard slipped a tiny hunter-seeker no more than five centimeters long. Paul recognized it at once - a common assassination weapon that every child of royal blood learned about at an early age. It was a ravening sliver of metal guided by some near-by hand and eye.

Re:

Does make a good story plot.

not necessarily

They could drop a bunch of repeaters in the area as well with the bugs, disguised as who knows what, a pile of dog crap, pine cones, whatever. The humans don't have to be right close by with wireless. They fly those predator attack drones from across the p

Forget tiny spiders....

I prefer my spiders to be 20ft tall and wielding giant laser canons of death.... Who needs a covert force when you can have one that kicks ass and takes names?

Ha! That's funny.

...helping to save thousands of lives

Yeah, right!

Re:Ha! That's funny.

Actually they probably will save soldier's lives. That doesn't mean they aren't creepy or that they won't be misused by Governments, but having little spybots to reconnoiter, especially in an urban setting, most certainly will save some lives.

Re:Ha! That's funny.

They will save some civilian lives, too. The soldiers will send one of these into the room to have a look around instead of throwing a grenade in and then rushing in guns blazing, if only because it's safer for them. They may also sometimes air-drop a few onto a building they've been told is a "terrorist" safe house to make sure it isn't really a child-care center before bombing it.

...And killing them?

So does the military sue people who step on these things the way we step on eveyr other insect?

battery life

That all sounds real dandy, but battery life is the achilles heel: these bugs and critters are only going to last a few minutes. Real insects last longer because they have much more energy-efficient locomotion and control, they have efficient fuel cells, and they replenish their energy supplies constantly by feeding.

Re:battery life

I don't suppose solar power would help solve that problem? After all real insects are attracted to light, so they may as well make these ones do the same.
Since they're insects, you could have several of them on a site at any one time, just swapping them around for recharging when the batteries run low.
Hell, combine that with some of the fancy swarming communication techniques we've been seeing lately so they can work together to get the best results at maximum efficiency.
It's really starting to look as though the future war of mankind vs. machine will be less big tanks and robots and more big mechanical spiders and cockroaches. It'll be like Starship troopers meets terminator, except we'll probably lose.

Re:battery life

That all sounds real dandy, but battery life is the achilles heel

An atomic battery [wikipedia.org] combined with some of the newer high efficiency solar cell tech should be sufficient I would thing. And probably a very small lithium ion battery for the solar cells to charge during the day. It could be programmed to find a safe spot to charge its battery with sunlight or even room lights every so often. Also it could have thin wires that could be programmed to recognize electrical outlets, especially in dark corners and behind furniture where it could insert its "antennae" to charge from AC power for a few minutes. One problem with this scenario might be noise. I bet indoors noise would always be a problem with these in any case even with rubberized feet. Another idea for outdoor use would be a micro wind turbine so that it might get some energy for recharging its batteries even at night. I also wonder if soldiers could charge them remotely with microwave transmissions.

save lives?

"British defence giant BAE Systems is creating a series of tiny electronic spiders, insects and snakes that could become the eyes and ears of soldiers on the battlefield, helping to save thousands of lives, and they claim that prototypes could be on the front line by the end of the year. A fascinating development to be sure, but who thinks this won't be misused domestically for spying and evidence gathering?"

Great, now you're going to tell me how guns, missiles, tanks and nuclear weapons save millions of lives.

Re:save lives?

"Great, now you're going to tell me how guns, missiles, tanks and nuclear weapons save millions of lives."

They have and do, but sometimes (when deterrence fails) at the cost of other lives.

WWII is an excellent example. It took killing millions of Germans, Japanese, Italians, and other Axis types to halt their enthusiastic killing of others. There not being a non-violent option for dealing with such folk (non-violence just meant surrender to extermination) it was perfectly logical and reasonable to save Allied lives by killing heaps of Axis humans. Those who snivel about it now are conveniently distant from having to actually deal with any similar problems. ;)

It worked superbly, like it or not.

I'm starting to think Brin is right

It may just be that it is physically impossible to have privacy in the future. If that's the case, then we should accept it and start putting into place the mechanisms to make sure that "transparency" is a two-way street, which is the best case scenario in that case.

Link to the Wikipedia article on his ideas:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society [wikipedia.org]

I can't believe nobody's said it yet

I, for one, welcome our giant insect overlords.

Pigs with bugs.

I am a lot less concerned about foreign/military uses for this tech and a lot more concerned with domestic/police use. Does any of us doubt that this will eventually trickle down to the corrupt stupid thug/bullies known as the police? A scary thought. Although I don't think the first generation of mobile surveillance "bugs" are going to be a threat indoors, I do think it will happen eventually.

Re:Pigs with bugs.

Crime lords and drug gangs only have power because our government gives it to them. Make gambling, drugs and sex legal and you take away a rather significant fraction of their revenue stream. Police and your friendly government agencies will be abusing their new found surveillance powers, it's not a question of if, it's merely a question of when.

Go live in a city where the crime lords and drug gangs run the place. Then you can come back and talk to us about thugs and bullies.

Arming these guys is going to get ugly.

This technology looks really cool(in a fairly creepy sort of way). The versions that they are currently proposing look more or less biomorphic spins on the "RC car with a camera" concept; but should still be useful. Even more interesting, though, will be the possibilities with smaller, more insectlike, mechanisms(which may well end up being cyborgs, not robots. Bugs are already good at what they do, much better than robots are, and DARPA is already playing with cybugs in the lab). Think of the mosquito, for instance. Those little guys essentially spend their lives following subtle chemical gradients to find their food sources and then swarm around them. Modify the chemical gradients they care about, dump a whole lot of them out of a plane, and you have a distributed sensor swarm that'll look for just about anything that has a scent.

The prospect that makes me nervous is what we'll do when we want to go beyond recon/search/surveillance type roles. Conventional weapons aren't going to scale down all that well. Chemical and biological weapons will. This will present an unseemly temptation. Being able to tailor lethally armed cybugs to hunt chemical traces and kill whatever turns up would be very useful. Trying to find that IED factory? Druggies blending into the crowd? Russian ambassador wearing a ghastly brand of aftershave? Actually doing any of this, though, is going really, really far into unpleasant territory. Very Unit 731 [wikipedia.org].

Only the battlefield?

I'll bet there's far more military espionage use being planned. Make a version that uses solar power and has small enough satellite comm chips inside. Even better, design it to allow recharging from electric outlets (which it can connect to at night). Let them lose on a country's borders, millions of them. If they cost a $1000 each, a million bots will constitute a 1 bil $ project. Chump change. They converge on the cities with preprogrammed maps, then start communicating only after they infiltrate major government buildings, intelligence facitilies, military research, terrorist caves...etc.

This (and the butterfly mentioned in TFA) is ultimate espionage. The idea is so cool that I am forced to momentarily disregard big brother threats from the Orwellian-minded.

Not exactly

"I thought soldiers were on a battlefield precisely to take as many lives as they could..."

No. If a nuclear armed nation wanted to take as many lives as possible, none of their soldiers would be on the battle-field.

Re:Saving thousands of lives on a battlefield...

> I thought soldiers were on a battlefield precisely to take as many lives as
> they could...

They are usually there to take and hold territory by any means necessary. If the enemy resists somebody gets killed but if they run away or surrender that works too.

Re:

isnt that how the Gatling gun was pitched?

Re:BAE Systems Motto

The idea is that they'll take out money and use it to take enemy lives instead of friendly ones. I think your cynicism meter needs adjusting.

Re:Thousands of lives?

The snarky reason why Tonkin and Vietnam and Iraq don't get mentioned is that they aren't wars...

Bullhockey.

Tell THIS girl [wikipedia.org] that she wasn't in a war zone.

Calling it "a police action", "counter-insurgency", or BY any other marginally more "pleasant" euphemism does NOT change the rules of the game.

It's war, plain and simple. Kill them before they have a chance to kill you. Period.

...unless you want to tell me the name really DID change to "Freedom Fries". :P