Development of robot surveillance system which can spy on humans in incredible detail
U.S. Navy funds
development of robot surveillance system which can spy on humans in incredible
detail
Research
chiefs want to harness the power of machines to build a snooping network that's
a 'single entity with many eyes'
11th April 2017, Updated:
11th April 2017,
It has handed a $1.7 million (£1.4 million)
grant to researchers from Cornell University, who are working to build a system
which can “conduct surveillance as a single entity with many eyes”.
An
illustration depicting the system, which is called ‘Convolutional-Features
Analysis and Control for Mobile Visual Scene Perception’
The cash was handed over by the U.S. Office of
Naval Research, which is dedicated to developing new forms of military and
civilian technology.
Last year,
we exclusively revealed that the same department discussed plans to
fit humans with microchips and track their every move.
Now it
wants to develop a system which lets teams of surveillance robots gather and
share intelligence “at the speed of light”.
“Once you
have robots that cooperate you can do all sorts of things,” said Kilian
Weinberger, associate professor of computer science.
The team
suggested the new technology “might help when teams of robots relieve humans of
dangerous jobs like disposing of landmines, cleaning up after a nuclear
meltdown or surveying the damage after a flood or hurricane”.
It could also be taught to spot people behaving
suspiciously, such as someone who has placed a backpack on the floor and walked
away.
The Navy is
likely to want to fit the technology into drones.
Of course,
one of the main things this sort of system could really do is to spy on people.
The Cornell
team’s technology will ultimately allow multiple robots to “identify objects
and track objects and people from place to place”.
This will
draw on the team’s expertise in “computer vision”, the name for a discipline
dedicated to teaching camera-fitted robots to observe the world and understand
what’s going on in front of them.
Facebook’s
artificial intelligence chief, Yann LeCun, is one of the world’s leading
expert in this field.
In September 2016, The Sun Online learned
thatLeCun contributed to academic papers exploring the creation of software
which would serve as a “key component” in an automated surveillance
network.
He was one
of four authors of a study aimed at teaching computers how to identify people
as they walked down a street, a technique known as pedestrian detection.
This is
useful in surveillance and security because it allows computers to quickly
analyse CCTV footage and work out if it can see a human or not.
When this
sort of technology is fitted into cameras which can communicate with each
other, you can basically wave goodbye to any sort of privacy because it will
let spooks, cops and even corporations follow your every move.
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