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Over recent years, more than 30 Chinese military and government agencies have been reportedly using drones made to look like birds to surveil China's citizens in at least five provinces, according to the South China Morning Post Sunday.
The program is reportedly codenamed "Dove" and run by Song Bifeng, a professor at Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi'an. Song was formerly a senior scientist on the Chengdu J-20, Asia's first fifth-generation stealth fighter jet, according to the Post.
The bird-like drones mimic the flapping wings of a real bird using a pair of crank-rockers driven by an electric motor. Each drone has a high-definition camera, GPS antenna, flight control system and data link with satellite communication capability, according to the Post.
While the "scale is still small", according to Yang Wenqing, a member of Song's team in a comment to the Post, the researchers "believe the technology has good potential for large-scale use in the future ... it has some unique advantages to meet the demand for drones in the military and civilian sectors."
(Score: 4, Interesting) by pdfernhout on Wednesday June 27 2018, @12:02AM
https://www.tangentonline.com/old-time-radio/1174-watchbird [tangentonline.com]
"The late 2001 SFWA Author Emeritus Robert Sheckley (1928-2005) saw "Watchbird" first published in the February, 1953 issue of Galaxy magazine. This radio adaptation comes from the short-lived (January 1-April 9, 1953) SF radio show Tales of Tomorrow, and aired on January 1, 1953 as the show's first episode. "Watchbird" has been adapted three times for television, first as an episode of the The Twilight Zone, then Babylon 5, and more recently (2007) as an (un-aired) episode in the Masters of Science Fiction series.
"Watchbird" postulates a scenario where scientists, working for a private sector corporation, have perfected a technique to invade the human mind (in essence to become telepathic) to such an intimate degree that the computer-programmed, miniaturized components the corporation can produce to literally read our very thoughts are narrowed to such a fine-tuned degree that they are able to determine when anyone is about to commit murder (can human thought be reduced to bits and bytes?). The military (with the approval of congress) gets hold of the device and installs it in drone-like "watchbirds" that scour the skies and are equipped with the capability to neutralize any potential murderer with what Sheckley calls "electrical immobilizers" (think powerful tasers from the skies). First, there is one watchbird, who tests successfully. Before long, the skies are filled with thousands of them...and then something goes horribly wrong. Sheckley's story not only adds a What if? reductio ad absurdum twist to the "Big Brother Is Watching" theme so chillingly portrayed by George Orwell's 1984, but takes it another frightening step and in a different direction that is perhaps more relevant today than ever before. "Watchbird" is a quintessential example of the cautionary SF story."
The biggest challenge of the 21st century: the irony of technologies of abundance used by scarcity-minded people.