Monday, February 2, 2015

When Your Drone Gets a Raspberry

Drones are mostly boring as they're the same geeks from the radio-controlled aircraft club except now they put cameras on the drones and peep through windows with them.  There were some dope smugglers the other day who put a GPS on a drone to deliver some meth.  That was clever as the police only need to recover the GPS after the crash and they can go directly to your address.

Much more fun with drones comes when AI (Artificial Intelligence) meets them.  The military probably thinks it has a fair bit of AI built into their drones but it doesn't take much programming to 'shoot any brown people you see.'

We doubt it's true but we hope your motives are a bit more noble than that as your home-built AI drone is built with a Raspberry Pi processor.  It's extremely lightweight and it can run Linux or even a tin-can version of Windows.  Power is via USB and your drone will need a power supply anyway.  The draw from the Raspberry is very low so that likely would not affect flight time significantly.  The weight of it would mean bigger motors but the processor is tiny so the increase would not be huge.

The processor is slow by any desktop standard but it has plenty of power for oversight of specific functions.  What those functions may be is up to your demented imagination.

For example, a Fox News truck must have some type of broadcast signature and your drone could seek it through the use of some logic on your Raspberry for guidance.  When your drone gets into close enough proximity, make the Fox News truck announce over the loudspeakers, "WE ARE MAKING PORNO."

There are so many public services an intelligent drone could offer.

No comments: