A new flying drone developed by researchers at the University of
Pennsylvania could one day be used to snatch humans off the street. Justin Thomas and his colleagues at the GRASP Lab have
produced an “avian-inspired” claw drone that mimics the way an eagle
uses its talons to grab a fish out of the ocean.
A video clip of the drone shows the UAV swooping down at
high speed to snatch an object using its 3D printed mechanical claw. By
mimicking how a bald eagle sweeps its legs and claws backwards to
aerodynamically close in on its prey without the need to slow down, the
drone is able to grasp a stationary object with precise efficiency.
Drexel University’s Christopher Korpela is simultaneously developing
flight stability software for drones with arms that would enable the
UAV’s to carry a weighty object without them falling out of the air. The
eventual purpose of the drones would be focused around “interacting
with people or the environment,” although that is still a long way off
according to Korpela.
Technology journalist Adario Strange envisages a future
scenario where a larger version of the eagle claw drone could be used by
law enforcement or military to pluck humans off the ground. “The optimistic view of this development offers a vision
of an emergency situation in which a drone could rapidly fly in and
save a person from a perilous situation, but it’s also fairly easy to
imagine law enforcement and the military using this development to grab
human targets in coming years,” writes Strange, reporting for DVice.com. “We may be about to see a return to the days when unseen
hunters lurking in the sky could easily snatch a human right off the
street,” he adds, referring to the pterosaur, a flying reptile that
existed 65 million years ago.
Although this incarnation of the eagle claw drone is far
too small to snatch and grab a human, the potential that larger models
could be deployed for that very purpose in future is sure to make many
nervous. As we reported yesterday,
military insiders like Lt. Col. Douglas Pryer are warning that drone
technology will soon metastasize into armies of remorseless killer
robots which will be used to stalk and incapacitate human targets.
Noel Sharkey,
professor of artificial intelligence and robotics at the University of
Sheffield, has also repeatedly warned that the robots currently being
developed under the auspices of DARPA will eventually be used to kill.
“Of course if it’s used for combat, it would be killing
civilians as well as it’s not going to be able to discriminate between
civilians and soldiers,” said Sharkey.
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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a host for Infowars Nightly News.
This article was posted: Friday, March 15, 2013 at 12:00 pm
Tags: drones, police state, tec