Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could....

[Cramulus]

sounds like you could thwart it by putting an electric blanket around a mannequin, sitting it in a golf cart, and letting 'er rip



coincidentally, that's also how we can solve the coronavirus

[Doktor Howl]

sounds like you could thwart it by putting an electric blanket around a mannequin, sitting it in a golf cart, and letting 'er rip



coincidentally, that's also how we can solve the coronavirus

Thermal imaging is the 3rd selector, not the first.  Also, one of the very first steps in swarming logic is to deny permissions for more than X number of parasite drones to attack the same target.

So say you set up your parameters as <image/human/object carried/37C/facial recognition probable or better>, and mama sees a potential target.  Of the 12-20 parasites available, only 2 or 3 are given permission to engage that target.  This prevents 12 drones hitting one guy while all the other guys move on.

[The Wizard Joseph]

sounds like you could thwart it by putting an electric blanket around a mannequin, sitting it in a golf cart, and letting 'er rip



coincidentally, that's also how we can solve the coronavirus

Thermal imaging is the 3rd selector, not the first.  Also, one of the very first steps in swarming logic is to deny permissions for more than X number of parasite drones to attack the same target.

So say you set up your parameters as <image/human/object carried/37C/facial recognition probable or better>, and mama sees a potential target.  Of the 12-20 parasites available, only 2 or 3 are given permission to engage that target.  This prevents 12 drones hitting one guy while all the other guys move on.

I was thinking of something like wave tactics where only x percent of them activate unless a certain numerical threshold of targets is detected and x percent of the previous wave have armed and locked in and or detonated, an absolute network functioning in the thousands to prevent large numbers of people from moving into an area. You seem to be talking about some form of mother drone doing the heavy thinking and very precisely directing the slaves if I follow you. I can't do the math, but conceptually I can grasp the scope and implications of such highly sophisticated systems. I am in no way surprised that I am behind the curve, but it's nice to know that the concepts in my head are at least within the meaningful portion of the data set.

I'm pretty smart, a savant or specialized genius as a point of fact that was shown to me through privately administered intelligence testing by a registered psychiatrist, and possessed of some pretty rare knowledge, but the most important thing that I know is that despite what I know or THINK I know, I know nothing. There are people who both know intimately FAR more for a fact, and moreover among that group there are individual humans that make my very greatest mental and even for lack of a better term spiritual capacity seem like that of a somewhat dim toddler with an emotional disorder. I don't even want to talk about the, um, not so human intelligences whose footprints I can see in the world, but cannot, MUST NOT, be directly pointed to if you know what's good for you if you know what I mean, and I think you do..

I call them footprints because the best secrets and conspiracies are only detectable not by what there is to see, but by what is NOT there, what has been disturbed. For instance the google search for "stoop bot" I just did from my somewhat mislabeled but clearly mine by data trail cash only phone yielded ample results as long as I was looking for an obscure mascot or returns involving either one word or the other or both uncorrelated in an article or video title. Either you literally just invented the term and are pulling my leg, and I know better FOR A FACT of my experience of you, or The Big G branch of the ABC quite intentionally refused to correlate the words and produce a meaningful result. Not my first rodeo there, my memetic tastes are pretty rarified at times.

And in Truth a search for a relatively mundane drone is just a few snowflakes on the relatively visible tip of an iceberg bigger than anyone would ever believe even upon seeing it with their own eyes.

I have come to consider "mundanity" an incredibly precious experiential resource in the course of my life.


 

[altered]

Dok mentioned swarming, which has no central node. So I think you’re wrong on the mother drone part.

Swarming behavior is not even a strict network if done correctly: the swarm just responds to the current nature of the other members. Telling any of them to veer will cause all of them to not because they’re connected, but because swarm behavior is emergent cooperative behavior based on things like specified distance from other members and keeping a certain size of active swarm members. (E.g if a swarm member notices there are only 50 other members, it won’t go on it’s own because that would reduce the swarm too much.)

My favorite part of swarm behavior research is when they realized hysteresis loops with big overlaps create the traditional “swarm formation” where members weave around each other. “Must have no less than 7 members nearby” and “must have no more than 2 members nearby” is a heavy hysteresis loop in groups under 85 members that creates a chaotic, pulsing swarm — which was the goal all along.

[Doktor Howl]

Dok mentioned swarming, which has no central node. So I think you’re wrong on the mother drone part.

Swarming behavior is not even a strict network if done correctly: the swarm just responds to the current nature of the other members. Telling any of them to veer will cause all of them to not because they’re connected, but because swarm behavior is emergent cooperative behavior based on things like specified distance from other members and keeping a certain size of active swarm members. (E.g if a swarm member notices there are only 50 other members, it won’t go on it’s own because that would reduce the swarm too much.)

My favorite part of swarm behavior research is when they realized hysteresis loops with big overlaps create the traditional “swarm formation” where members weave around each other. “Must have no less than 7 members nearby” and “must have no more than 2 members nearby” is a heavy hysteresis loop in groups under 85 members that creates a chaotic, pulsing swarm — which was the goal all along.

Swarming still has a central node.  We don't have true swarming capability yet.  If the action is to be coordinated, you still need mama drone.

Also, there was a neat little program out of the back of BYTE magazine back in the 80s, "Life".  It was the loop you describe, allowing random or inputed values that would then follow what is now know as swarm behavior, until it went static or the value chain died.

[Doktor Howl]

I call them footprints because the best secrets and conspiracies are only detectable not by what there is to see, but by what is NOT there, what has been disturbed. For instance the google search for "stoop bot" I just did from my somewhat mislabeled but clearly mine by data trail cash only phone yielded ample results as long as I was looking for an obscure mascot or returns involving either one word or the other or both uncorrelated in an article or video title. Either you literally just invented the term and are pulling my leg, and I know better FOR A FACT of my experience of you, or The Big G branch of the ABC quite intentionally refused to correlate the words and produce a meaningful result. Not my first rodeo there, my memetic tastes are pretty rarified at times.

It comes from this:

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/science/peregrine-falcons-missile-like-dive-could-help-design-ultimate-drone-killer/13/04/

As far as I have ever seen, this is the only article anyone has ever written about it outside of trade journals.

[altered]

Dok mentioned swarming, which has no central node. So I think you’re wrong on the mother drone part.

Swarming behavior is not even a strict network if done correctly: the swarm just responds to the current nature of the other members. Telling any of them to veer will cause all of them to not because they’re connected, but because swarm behavior is emergent cooperative behavior based on things like specified distance from other members and keeping a certain size of active swarm members. (E.g if a swarm member notices there are only 50 other members, it won’t go on it’s own because that would reduce the swarm too much.)

My favorite part of swarm behavior research is when they realized hysteresis loops with big overlaps create the traditional “swarm formation” where members weave around each other. “Must have no less than 7 members nearby” and “must have no more than 2 members nearby” is a heavy hysteresis loop in groups under 85 members that creates a chaotic, pulsing swarm — which was the goal all along.

Swarming still has a central node.  We don't have true swarming capability yet.  If the action is to be coordinated, you still need mama drone.

Also, there was a neat little program out of the back of BYTE magazine back in the 80s, "Life".  It was the loop you describe, allowing random or inputed values that would then follow what is now know as swarm behavior, until it went static or the value chain died.

That algorithm got refined into a better one in the 90s, Boids. Boids has no malfunction state and is automatically adaptive to new kinds of input (e.g. obstacle avoidance, time of flight, avoidance of aggressors). You can add goal seeking behavior and it works fine.

Boids is computationally cheap — a good simulation of 200 Boids with food requirements and predators ran fine on my 486 as a child, it would be possible to run the sim on a per agent basis with the equivalent of a cheap modern alarm clock — and really effective.

If I recall, the only problem with it is it has no provision for dispersal or even just splitting the swarm up, and attempts to work it in lead to erratic behavior. Not great for most practical applications where you want a swarm. (You want it to be able to decide “NO MORE SWARM EVERYONE SCATTER” in some instances for most all of those applications.)

There are some effective splitting ones, but they require big processing or a leadership figure.

Good to know even the current generation hasn’t quite solved that problem.

[Doktor Howl]

Dok mentioned swarming, which has no central node. So I think you’re wrong on the mother drone part.

Swarming behavior is not even a strict network if done correctly: the swarm just responds to the current nature of the other members. Telling any of them to veer will cause all of them to not because they’re connected, but because swarm behavior is emergent cooperative behavior based on things like specified distance from other members and keeping a certain size of active swarm members. (E.g if a swarm member notices there are only 50 other members, it won’t go on it’s own because that would reduce the swarm too much.)

My favorite part of swarm behavior research is when they realized hysteresis loops with big overlaps create the traditional “swarm formation” where members weave around each other. “Must have no less than 7 members nearby” and “must have no more than 2 members nearby” is a heavy hysteresis loop in groups under 85 members that creates a chaotic, pulsing swarm — which was the goal all along.

Swarming still has a central node.  We don't have true swarming capability yet.  If the action is to be coordinated, you still need mama drone.

Also, there was a neat little program out of the back of BYTE magazine back in the 80s, "Life".  It was the loop you describe, allowing random or inputed values that would then follow what is now know as swarm behavior, until it went static or the value chain died.

That algorithm got refined into a better one in the 90s, Boids. Boids has no malfunction state and is automatically adaptive to new kinds of input (e.g. obstacle avoidance, time of flight, avoidance of aggressors). You can add goal seeking behavior and it works fine.

Boids is computationally cheap — a good simulation of 200 Boids with food requirements and predators ran fine on my 486 as a child, it would be possible to run the sim on a per agent basis with the equivalent of a cheap modern alarm clock — and really effective.

If I recall, the only problem with it is it has no provision for dispersal or even just splitting the swarm up, and attempts to work it in lead to erratic behavior. Not great for most practical applications where you want a swarm. (You want it to be able to decide “NO MORE SWARM EVERYONE SCATTER” in some instances for most all of those applications.)

There are some effective splitting ones, but they require big processing or a leadership figure.

Good to know even the current generation hasn’t quite solved that problem.

An easy solution is to have the drones share the processing, but then the loss of members makes the whole dumber and dumber, causing more losses, in a feedback loop of failure.

As it stands, when mama drone stops talking, you can have a default of "return to launch point", "shut off and/or melt", or "attack any moving object".

So it's not nearly true swarm behavior.  The math is pretty easy.  The processing isn't, as you say.