From Drones To Surveillance

I'm sad to tell you, but this is my last post about the special forces exhibition. I'm not sure why, but over the past week, I got attached to the topic, even though it's not quite a happy one. I liked the process of going through the photos and researching what I had to write about. It was a learning process and can tell you, now I know more. I came to Hive to learn (English) and since then, I'm learning something new every single day.

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As I mentioned previously, this part of the exhibition was hosted in the bastion and what you're going to see was on the third floor. These were the stairs up there, really cool stairs.

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So the banner says:

Building The World's Best AI Pilot. (Powered by Hivemind)

Edge AI for situational awareness in complex contested environments,

Level 5 autonomy on heavily SWaP constrained system

I cropped the photo for you to see the screen. This is how they see the field in the control room. It's scary though.

That was a video, so I waited a little and took another photo of the screen, showing the V-BAT in extreme conditions, which means -40°C/-49F.

We're talking about AI every day, but what we know about AI can't be compared to what the military or science knows about AI and where AI is used by them.

Here's their website -> https://shield.ai/v-bat/ Check out the videos available as you won't regret it.

V-BAT
Maritime UAS of Choice
V-BAT beat out 13 competitors to win the Navy and SOCOM MTUAS Increment 2 Program of Record. Its unique design and controls allow it to take off & land in high winds, on crowded flight decks, aboard moving vessels with landing zones as small as 12’ x 12’. source

The other part of the room had some bigger toys.

Telecommunication is key, so having performant equipment is also key.

Detectors and bullet proof vests. My regret is that I did not ask if I can try one of those vest on. I always wanted to know or better yet, feel how it feels like to wear such a vest. It's not light for sure, but how heavy can it be?

In case you're wondering, no, this is not a toy helicopter. It's a drone but it looks very cool.

I cropped the image for you to see this little beauty. Cool toy, isn't it?

There were a lot of screens in each room, with videos to show you what these devices, drones are doing. This is the best way to spread knowledge in my opinion and I with I had time to watch them all.

Unless you work for the army, police or some intelligence agency, this is something you only see in the movies. It's the inside of a surveillance van. This is where the drone is controlled from.

This is the side of the van, you don't see any suspicious, you can't spot any clues, that would indicate it's not a regular van. Yet. look at what's inside :)

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Hexacopters are flying machines just like quadcopters which produce the lifting and propulsion force to fly by using their six rotors. The difference between a quadcopter and a hexacopter is their number of rotors. The extra rotors of hexacopters provides them more lifting capacity. Compared ro quadcopters, hexacopters can fly at higher altitudes and speeds. Since they have six rotors, they can land safely even if one (in some cases two) of their rotors stops working. Their main disadvantages are extra cost and increase in size due to the extra two rotors.

Hexacopters are the most balanced in terms of efficiency and cost among other multicopters. Although quadcopters have lower cost, they cannot reach the altitudes and speeds of hexacopters and their lifting capacity is low. Octocopters have higher lifting capacity, but since they have eight rotors, their costs are much higher.

Hexacopters are mainly used for photo or video shots by their attached cameras. For that reason their being able to fly at high altitudes and increased lifting capacity has great importance. Since they have lower cost compared to octocopters, they are seen as the most efficient option among multicopters. Their ability to land safely even if they have motor problems avoids the equipment to suffer any damage due to falling. source

As technology and science is advancing so fast, these drones and other similar devices are now available for non military personnel. I was thinking I don't want to wake up one day with drone in my window.

I tried to Google this bit came up empty handed. Anyway, you see it's a drone, a bigger one than the previous ones.

And finally a quadcopter.

A quadcopter or quadrotor is a type of helicopter with four rotors. Although quadrotor helicopters and convertiplanes have long been flown experimentally, the configuration remained a curiosity until the arrival of the modern UAV or drone. The small size and low inertia of drones allows use of a particularly simple flight control system, which has greatly increased the practicality of the small quadrotor in this application. source

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Later I saw this tent, that brought back some thoughts. In one of my earlier posts I already posted a tent of a similar size, but different model. This was not open, I mean not this side anyway. On the other side there were the products of a footwear company, so who knows what was inside. Anyway, I keep thinking a tent like this (maybe smaller though) would be cool for camping, if you have enough space in the car.