DARPA shows off 1.8-gigapixel surveillance drone, can spot a terrorist from 20,000 feet
January 30, 2013
ARGUS view from 20,000 feet
DARPA and the US Army have taken the wraps off ARGUS-IS, a 1.8-gigapixel video surveillance platform that can resolve details as small as six inches from an altitude of 20,000 feet (6km), ExtremeTech reports.
ARGUS is by far the highest-resolution surveillance platform in the world, and probably the highest-resolution camera in the world, period.
ARGUS, which would be attached to some kind of unmanned UAV (such as the Predator) and flown at an altitude of around 20,000 feet, can observe an area of 25 square kilometers (10sqmi) at any one time. If ARGUS was hovering over New York City, it could observe half of Manhattan. Two ARGUS-equipped drones, and the US could keep an eye on the entirety of Manhattan, 24/7.
Comments (44)
by Teame Zazzu
This technology is ALREADY being deployed for use by police across the US and has been used in multiple states across the US.
( http://defense-update.com/20120806_vigilant_stare.html)
This tech is a complete violation of privacy and constitutional rights and is the very definition of a police surveillance state. One device that literally tracks everyone in the city and databases their movements for forensic discovery is an assault on one’s freedom from unreasonable search. In an environment of gun bans, whistleblower imprisonment, indefinite detention, torture, dragnet electronic spying and secret law, ARGUS and Persistics are existential threats to individual liberty, privacy and constitutional rights. Join Teame Zazzu in opposing the deployment of Wide Area Persistent Surveillance technologies inside the USA.
by Rachel
And DHSn will be using it against WE, the people.
by Raghavendra
Wow! That’s an amazing feet of achievement! I think the future is going to be more technologically advanced than shown in any science fiction movies! The kind of technologies used for image processing and handling of the immense data is just impressive!
by Dr.NiRo
People will soon realize that that can shoot these things down with 10 W Lasers :)
by dave
A good link on this is here:
http://cosmoquest.org/forum/showthread.php/57673-Orbital-surveillance-satellites-now-exceed-1-inch-resolution
Search to the bottom. I am sure that the drone version is much less expensive. My thought on the subject is to look here:
http://www.kurzweilai.net/first-3d-ghost-images-from-a-single-pixel
I have been watching this progress for some time. Instead of 1.8 gp you have a massive reduction in cost but will have to choose the scanning frequencies. Better to not worry about color just penetration.
by GatorALLin
This was cool to see what they can do to track moving objects separately and record all of this data per day (Zettabyte of data per day…my new word), but I was hoping resolution would actually be better or good enough to read a licence plate (maybe the angle is wrong and too overhead or straight down to read licence plates unless like cop cars, numbers mounted on the roof). Hey that bald guy might be the bad guy…. I mean look for turban tracking software next. Interesting to hear about the stitching software tricks to keep the moving objects all tracked correctly.
by little newyork
i kno 4sure they doing tht to china…..
by dave
I am sure DARPA can do better. There are plenty of different ways to collect this type of data with much less expense. I am curious if the giant eye can see through clouds, fog etc. Many ways to get over all of this and an actual depth of field. Waste of money to just show some new toy to make one think someone is smarter than you and the spy vs. spy world exists in your neighborhood….
by Spikosauropod
“darpa wanted to move fast and keep costs down” so they used a bunch of cell phone chips. it seems like they did basically what you are suggesting.
by Bri
@Dave: They can actually see through clouds. They have had the ability for awhile. Some photons pass through and they collect those. I don’t know how good the resolution is or how long it takes to generate an image. They only give us teasers. The really good stuff we won’t here about for many years.
by Sno
“Terrorists”, riiight
by James
well, all Americans that are a threat to their agenda are “terrorists” Stop them now before we are all doomed.
by HarryP
Time to pull my invisibility cloak out of the closet
by Rachel
And very wide brimmed hats
by Pudding
smoke is a very very good thing sometimes, the indians knew that.
by Chrispium
It’s why chinese cities are so smoggy ;)
by Kim
They are just trying to scare you, don’t buy in.
by Spotted Marley
I recommend that anybody who has interest in this subject and who hasn’t already watched this episode of Nova yet, should do so! Totally eye-opening… and kinda scary.
http://video.pbs.org/video/2326108547
by Song Bird Johnny
Good – now get these deployed down on our Southern Border and stop that Terrorists Flow from the South.
by JustB
Amen Brother!
by margie
Who are you talking about? The people who come here to work as janitors and busboys?? The US is exporting weapons to Mexico and further south. So who would the terrorists be?
by John Bramble
Senor,
The gentleman is not speaking about Spanish Workers, he, I believe is speaking about people who enter your country and transport to the American border and simply walk across our border. These are from dozens of countries. Many are not from the Americas, some are terrorist, there has been much conversation about this.
I must assume you, like myself have missed much of that news, because we work for a living.
JB
by Bri
The government likes to tease us like a magician waving object in front of you, to draw your attention to where they want it. The military has had Hubble style telescopes pointing at targets on earth for quite some time. This just increases the number of areas that they can monitor. It means that survailence will proliferate like crazy. The real story is the object tracking capabilities. I’ll bet they track more than seventy targets per feed. In theory they could track everyones movements.
by godot
Yes. What an outrageous statement about resolution! Technically, I think both Edwin Land’s U-2 and the “keyhole” series of satellites (which can reportedly read license plates from 100 miles) have higher than the quoted resolution. Then, again, maybe they are misrepresenting to the public the minimum feature size Argus can resolve from 20,000 ft. altitude.
by DrDubious
This puts “Big Brother is Watching” in a whole new league.
You’ve got to give credit to the Ruling Class though: It was pretty slick distracting us with all that 2nd Amendment nonsense while they took away the 1st, 4th, 5th and 6th.
by Mark
I guess I’m curious as to the “terrorist” aspect.
Does anyone seriously think this will ultimately be limited only to watching for “terrorists”?
The headline should have read “can spot YOU from 20,000 feet”.
I suspect many politicians would brand protesters of all kinds with that tag if they could.
So what will the constraints on spying be?
by Dr. X
Not only terrorists, but many other types of criminals would be affected by this tech.
by WLGJR
I apologize for asking a question out of topic, but are you the same person or are related to the other frequent commentator Mr. X?
by Mr.X
No he or she is not.
by zury
Agree!
by WLGJR
Sooner or later they can monitor everything within the volume of Earth and its atmosphere down to subatomic details. This means your thoughts can be monitored too.
How does that help with achieving Singularity?
by godot
As Joseph Weizenbaum said in “Computer Power and Human Reason,” “when you’re falling down a manhole, it doesn’t necessarily help to know precisely how quickly you are falling.”
by WLGJR
Are you (or/and that Mr Weizenbaum) claiming that the Singularity is a manhole, and the consequences of it undersirable?
Are you (or/and that Mr Weizenbaum) against the progresses and the Singularity?
by godot
Joseph Weizenbaum was one of the most perceptive computer scientists of the mainframe generation. He is credited with writing the first program to process natural language. I highly recommend his book, “Computer Power and Human Reason.” Of course, I cannot speak for Dr. Weizenbaum on any topic, and certainly not the singularity.
Personally, I have no feeling one way or the other about encouraging “the singularity.” I am still trying to come to terms with the quasi-logical arbitrary way that an asymptotic limit (singularity) was defined for what virtually everyone agrees is an exponential growth curve. I wish neither to offend nor to draw the ire of a religious cult, but I believe the arbitrariness of this definition is reflected by the “singularity” being first forecast to occur in 2032, and now being forecast for 2046. In any case, I believe it is inevitable that machines will eventually out-perform humans in intellectual endeavors. Why should I have an emotional attachment to a situation which is inevitable? Do you?
It is oft quoted that engineers overestimate the short-term, and underestimate the long-term. Taking “the singularity” as a long-term estimate, I, personally, believe that Ray has underestimated the rapidity with which the changes identified with “the singularity” will come about. And I don’t necessarily believe that losing all our individual identities and disappearing into a pie-in-the-sky AI is an altogether good thing. Nor do I believe that beings selected for survival will magically convert from the egocentric self-interested behaviors they have always exhibited historically to rabid socialists due to the singularity. This is akin to what Timothy Leary preached re: LSD, and what R. Buckminster Fuller preached re: technological abundance. I note, as evidenced by unemployment and poverty statistics, alone, that neither has occurred.
Again, personally (since you asked), I believe that Weizenbaum’s statement, “when you are falling down a manhole, it isn’t necessarily helpful to know precisely how fast you are falling,” best currently describes the fallacy of the smart energy grid. It was in no way intended as a criticism of anyone’s predilection for a head-long race into The Matrix, nor was it meant to cause reflection on being enthralled with the neo-rapture.
by melajara
Transparency should be assured both ways.
How about transparent politicians?
How about a democracy where officials would be prevented to lie, not by submission to an hypocrite swearing ceremonial (or parody of) but by submitting to random brain scans or targeted ones on important occasions?
How many candidates still running for important elections in such a cleansed democracy?
by ChrisF
Yes, imagine this tech in the wrong hands… it could be used by a repressive government to monitor an unauthorized gathering and then track the individual protesters back to their homes. Deeply scary. I just hope the “good” uses prevail over the “bad” ones…
by Bob Vasquez
It can’t spot a “terrorist” from that altitude; it can spot a “person”. Other information is required to identify said person as a terrorist.
by Friend
Thank You
I thought it was awfully kind of extremetech to ensure they use the word terrorist.
by WLGJR
Certainly no one need that much pixels at all times, I mean, there must be some kind of compression process going on constantly.
Perhaps, with that much pixelity, such a camera could detect more than optic data, but some other data of other sensory types as well: e.g. audio (from (visually seen) disturbance in air), chemical-olfactory (from chemical-induced hues in air), touch/textureOfSurfaces, et cetera.
Once such tech is developed, we need brave Robinhood type to help us get it out from government’s (and corporation’s in the other cases) hands and distribute it to the rest of us.
The world may therefore look chaotic, but chaoticness is the ideal criteria for optimal evolution (of technology) and path to Singularity.
BTW, if it is possible to deduce data of more than one sense (I know this is already achieved by astronomical science probes and that I personally am not an expert in this field) from a visual sensor, new kinds of camouflage must be developed in order to decieve such sensors.
Let’s hope China, Russia, India and other of world’s leading military technology researchers can catch up (but stay intelligent enough to prevent large-scale wars and peacefully resolve small-scales with minimal conflict and casualty).
If it takes rather short amount of time for this tech to reach the commercial world, this of course will bring huge benefit to those who use this as cyborgization part (actually this, and perhaps mere slightly improvement on this, can exceed natural human visual capacity, and even visual capacity of visually powerful animals like eagles).
Being able to see in two or more modes (eg 1 eye normal, 1 eye infrared or 1 eye normal, 1 eye in Fourier transform) simultaneouly will enhance human cognitive function and help people think and process data in new ways, which also contribute to Singularity.
by Steve Waclo
Exciting, and troubling…
by Dr. X
One would need 25,000 UAVs to keep track of whole Afghanistan.
On the other hand, if they improve coverage from 10 square miles to 100 number of required UAVs would be manageable.
by godot
I read an article in Huffington Post yesterday that says they have an inventory of 20,000 drones in Afghanistan. Of course, they are not all flying simultaneously, and they are probably not equipped with Argus. But it is difficult to judge what is manageable when the scope of resources available is unknown.
by Brian Robinson
My colleagues here at the University of Alabama in Huntsville Center for Applied Optics, led by David Pollock, and an outfit known at the time as Argusight, developed this technology. It is patented and is based on a multi-aperture camera system and an algorithm that stitches together the sub-fields. You can see this from the map he points to in the video.
by godot
OK, then, Dr. Robinson: From the horse’s mouth, then, so-to-speak, how can you claim that Argus has a higher resolution than the keyhole satellites and the Hubble telescope, “PERIOD”???