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AI Transportation

Attention Rogue Drone Pilots: AI Can See You (ieee.org) 32

schwit1 quotes IEEE Spectrum: The minute details of rogue drone's movements in the air may unwittingly reveal the drone pilot's location — possibly enabling authorities to bring the drone down before, say, it has the opportunity to disrupt air traffic or cause an accident. And it's possible without requiring expensive arrays of radio triangulation and signal-location antennas. So says a team of Israeli researchers who have trained an AI drone-tracking algorithm to reveal the drone operator's whereabouts, with a better than 80% accuracy level. They are now investigating whether the algorithm can also uncover the pilot's level of expertise and even possibly their identity...

Depending on the specific terrain at any given airport, a pilot operating a drone near a camouflaging patch of forest, for instance, might have an unobstructed view of the runway. But that location might also be a long distance away, possibly making the operator more prone to errors in precise tracking of the drone. Whereas a pilot operating nearer to the runway may not make those same tracking errors but may also have to contend with big blind spots because of their proximity to, say, a parking garage or control tower. And in every case, he said, simple geometry could begin to reveal important clues about a pilot's location, too. When a drone is far enough away, motion along a pilot's line of sight can be harder for the pilot to detect than motion perpendicular to their line of sight. This also could become a significant factor in an AI algorithm working to discover pilot location from a particular drone flight pattern.

The sum total of these various terrain-specific and terrain-agnostic effects, then, could be a giant finger pointing to the operator.

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Attention Rogue Drone Pilots: AI Can See You

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  • by SNRatio ( 4430571 ) on Saturday August 01, 2020 @03:58PM (#60355817)
    If the pilot is using the view from the drone's camera to navigate, then movements of the drone provide no information about where the pilot is.
    • Does the video stream transmission work when there are buildings in the line of sight? I'd assume that they use low-power 2.4 GHz radios, which get attenuated a lot by building materials.

      • by cciRRus ( 889392 )
        Drones typically do not fly near tall buildings. This is not because of radio interference (2.4GHz is typically for controls, 5.8GHz is for video feeds) but GPS interference. The loss of positioning ability is a greater problem than loss of radio or video signals. With positioning support, drones can fly on its own, including returning to home.
    • by Toad-san ( 64810 )

      Doh.

  • We can't let just anyone record what the Big Man doesn't want recorded from above.

    • by Calydor ( 739835 )

      At an airport I'm sure they're far more concerned about you flying your drone into a jet engine on a plane about to take off.

  • loaded with explosives and all headed to the same target are the future.

    No pilot required.

  • A lot of UAS/drone pilots have already played with FPV and control over 4G and 5G links as an alternative to the ham bands. The militarizes flys over satalite links 24/7/365 with it being very uncommon for the loiter cruise operators even to be in region.
    Flying 30 feet away or 30km or 300km away from the operator is going to make no difference over a 250ms latency link. Its tough but not hard to do in close proximity to a lot of objects.

    What does this matter, there is only a rash of sightings of d
  • As I read "AI can see you", my first thought was "Who's this Alan they're talking about"?

  • IEEE now blindly reprint press-releases from shady companies selling fear-mongering anti boogeyman terrorist A.I.?

  • ok, so they can train AI on drone movements to pilot orientation, locating possible pilot locations. But as drone piloting goes autonomous, or at least more supervisory, this will be useless. Especially if there is no pilot (full autonomous). Easiest way to find a drone currently is RF--Rx/Tx transmission must follow laws of physics. Once you lose that (in the above trends), it become much more difficult. I'm still waiting for the light-sky-blue paint drone, AI systems would love that.
  • by Herschel Cohen ( 568 ) on Saturday August 01, 2020 @04:43PM (#60355909) Journal

    I expected better from the IEEE (members') Journal. How could they have published such a simple minded guided research where they called upon A.I. to validate the basis, then make unwarranted, over blown claims that even at first sight (i.e. just reading the article and knowing the thinnest bit about drone flight) the beginning assumptions were false as well as the methods employed?

    This article is embarrassing, can it just be deleted?

    • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      I expected better from the IEEE (members') Journal. How could they have published such a simple minded guided research where they called upon A.I. to validate the basis, then make unwarranted, over blown claims that even at first sight (i.e. just reading the article and knowing the thinnest bit about drone flight) the beginning assumptions were false as well as the methods employed?

      This article is embarrassing, can it just be deleted?

      IEEE Spectrum is not a members only journal. It's the IEEE magazine, and t

  • At least the submitter got it right and we're not having to deal with rouge drones wearing horrible makeup.
  • Or just DJI where they've been
  • Don't most of the drones provide a first person view? Effectively rendering this research useless?
  • Someone recently gave me an old drone. I was surprised to learn that are few places in Northern California that I could fly it. Nearly all of the airspace in Northern California has been sold off to commercial interests, leaving only little gaps, where people can fly drone, or paramotors. Of those gaps, you can't fly in OpenSpace preserves. Local governments such as Santa Clara County, work to sell off permits for over $900/day. The remaining drone airspace will likely be sold to Amazon.

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