Drones and Robots

On September 27, 2020, a short and decisive war in the Caucasus erupted that provides a glimpse of wars to come. Azerbaijan and Armenia clashed in a conflict in rough, mountainous terrain that lasted 44 days and ended in Armenia’s surrender and Azerbaijan’s triumph. The battlespace was the area of Nagorno-Karabakh, the contested region between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijanis executed their version of cross-domain maneuver to win a rapid and decisive victory against a defending and determined adversary. To achieve this, the Azerbaijanis invested a reported $24B+ to upgrade their forces, purchasing the latest Turkish and Israeli Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Loitering Munitions (LMs). The effective use by Azerbaijan of these weapons in the war was stunning. The unrelenting tempo, precision, and lethality of the Azerbaijani aerial top-attacks devastated and demoralized the Armenians and played a definitive role in Azerbaijan’s victory. These systems did not win the war by themselves, and UAVs have been over-hyped in many press accounts of the war, but the impact of the high-definition full-motion video (FMV) provided by top-attack systems categorized this conflict as “the war of the drones.” The Azerbaijanis used the secure FMV capabilities of their systems to enhance sensor-shooter integration, to obtain battle damage assessment, and for propaganda to win the information war. In these aspects, especially the use of secure tactical FMV video and data links, the conflict is a harbinger for wars to come.

A new powerful military weapon has appeared in the skies of world and with it a new form of warfare has quickly emerged bringing with it a host of pressing ethical questions and issues. This book brings together some of the best scholars currently working on these questions and provides timely and important arguments on many of the most significant and previously unexplored areas of this recent debate. Essays range from broad theoretic questions regarding the moral permissibility of killing by drones to specific examinations of particular uses of unmanned weapons such as their role in counterinsurgency operations, humanitarian interventions, and their controversial use in “targeted killings.” Some scholars engage remarkably vexing issues such as what happens to classic military virtues such as bravery for the warriors who fly remotely controlled drones from complete safety, half a world away from the combat in which they operate. Others wrestle over the future of such technology and...

In order to enter symmetrical relations of force in a war, the two opposing sides need to have some balance in technology (and overall power). When such balance is not there in a war, e.g. like the Gulf War in the early 1990s, it transforms into, what Jean Baudrillard calls, a non-war. In other words, he questions the occurrence or reality of a non-war. Along the lines of Baudrillard's critique of the Gulf War, we register critique of the ongoing drone war on the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderland. We argue that the technological imbalance is even worse in this drone war. Accordingly, there is higher level of asymmetry in the relations of force, which has transfigured the nature/reality of this war. We apply and test a set of Baudrillard's concepts to explain this transfigured nature of the drone war.

The lessons of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War represent a significant change in the methods of war.  This war has significance similar to the impact of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The lessons of the 1973 War influenced the development of tactics and weaponry during the Cold War and beyond. For example, the US military conducted a thorough study of the Yom Kippur War, derived a new doctrine called AirLand Battle, and developed new systems, the “Big 5” — the M1 Main Battle Tank, Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle, Apache Helicopter, Black Hawk Helicopter, and Patriot Air Defense System. These warfighting platforms, although significantly upgraded, remain the mainstay of the US Army’s striking power today. The methods of war, however, are changing and the recent fighting in the Caucasus provides insights for wars to come. As the first war won primarily with unmanned systems, we neglect the study of the Second Nagorno- Karabakh War at our own peril.

Ships, since their invention more than 30 centuries ago, never gave up their crew to be driven and carry out the activities by which they were created or designed. However, the constant evolution and automation, coupled with the enormous revolution in global telecommu-nications, coupled with the mitigation of human failures that account for most maritime ac-cidents, large and influential players in the international shipbuilding industry (Norway, England, Japan, Finland and the United States) are working to materialize the most impressive innovation of the postmodern era in the oceans: a totally autonomous ship, that is, without crew. Robotics is one of the branches of human engineering that is most advanced in the current stage of civilization. As a technique for replacing the tasks of a human being, robotics allows an extremely low rate of failure, accidents and waste when compared to the limitations where human activity conducts the same type of activity. The automation at its highest level provided by robots, or by interconnected robot systems, allows the most different activities to be solved with much greater precision, efficiency and extremely low waste rate. This work analyzes some of the impacts that such technologies may bring to the Merchant Navy as we have conceived today, since there are already several prototypes of vessels of this type in progress that promise to revolutionize the way in which maritime transport will occur in the coming decades. This paper will focus on the main projects in progress and how they are being implemented. It will seek to discuss the fragile points that could affect the reliability of autonomous ships in situations such as fires, collisions, cyber attacks, piracy, among others. Where will the human interface in these robots be predicted for the first models that are already in production? What existing "players" of the maritime industry are involved in the fabrication of these models? In what activities? Will these vessels really be safe for the operations by which they will be designed? What risks will have to be overcome with the current technologies that produce such vessels? In which segments of maritime transport will these technologies be deployed in the coming years? Finally, the work will show in which segments of maritime transport these technologies may be deployed in the next few years, according to some projects that are already being disclosed and, potentially, where this new technology would have the potential to be implemented.

At present, the oil industry has suffered decreases of the cost of the product, which has created gigantic economic cuts, together with a decentralizing energy reform of the services. This has led to massive layoffs and massive pre-retirements of trained personnel with extensive experience in all branches of industry, as well as the labor conditions have become increasingly demanding, putting workers on strenuous workloads, which creates the possibility of more errors and incidental accidents or incidents.
2
Similarly, having less budget for any service, including maintenance of any structure, since they are maximized the conditions of such work centers, to a large extent and those who are most at the mercy of natural phenomena are the oil rigs and pipelines by which the hydrocarbons are transferred from the operating centers to the process centers or the storage sites and subsequently sold either by land or sea.
It is for this reason that the introduction of new technologies (specialized drones) can help to reverse the incidence of accidents or incidents, with better verification and evaluation of processes, services or safety, ie maintenance of structures and monitoring of pipelines that generate so many hydrocarbon spills and thus, prevent and save the possible effects of both human losses and environmental damage and operational stoppages that have millionaire costs. Encouraging with this the safety, health and environmental care.

En la documentación presentamos la evolución constante que han mantenido los UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) a lo largo de la historia satisfaciendo las necesidades de los desarrolladores al presentar una solución en áreas específicas, mediante estas contribuciones de Open Source aplicamos nuevas técnicas de control y aplicación a los UAV adaptadas a las necesidades de la región.

Extensive Bibliography on Drone Warfare.
Textbooks and General Overviews
Conceptual Questions
Drone History and Historical Research
Debates and Controversies
Ethics
US Politics
International Implications
International Politics
Geopolitics
Nonstate Drone Use
Critical Literature
Geography
Public Opinion

Τα μη επανδρωμένα αεροσκάφη ή Drones όπως είναι ευρέως γνωστά,  έχουν χρησιμοποιηθεί για στρατιωτικούς σκοπούς αλλά και στο πλαίσιο επιστημονικών και ερευνητικών πρωτοβουλιών από τη δεκαετία του 1960. Ωστόσο, την τελευταία δεκαετία έχουν γνωρίσει σημαντική ανάπτυξη, κυρίως λόγω της ραγδαίας τεχνολογικής εξέλιξης, αυξάνοντας κατακόρυφα και το ενδιαφέρον για την αξιοποίηση τους σε πλήθος εφαρμογών της καθημερινότητας. Το «Βιβλίο των Drones» περιέχει όλες τις απαραίτητες γνώσεις για τις τεχνολογίες που χρησιμοποιούνται στα Drones, εξειδικευμένες πληροφορίες για τα συστήματα με τα οποία είναι εξοπλισμένα καθώς και στοιχεία για τις εφαρμογές τους σε διαφορετικούς τομείς της σύγχρονης κοινωνίας.

Στην πρώτη ενότητα του βιβλίου, γίνεται μία σύντομη ιστορική αναδρομή της εξέλιξης τους, παρουσιάζονται οι εξειδικευμένοι όροι που χρησιμοποιούνται, καθώς και οι κατηγορίες τους ενώ στην συνέχεια περιγράφονται τα βασικά στοιχεία της αεροδυναμικής, των επικοινωνιών αλλά και των συστημάτων αυτομάτου ελέγχου που χρησιμοποιούν. Παρουσιάζονται επίσης οι αρχές λειτουργίας και οι πληροφορίες των οργάνων πτήσης τους, τα βασικά στοιχεία της εναέριας φωτογράφισης καθώς και τα χαρακτηριστικά του ελέγχου και της κατεύθυνσης τους.

Στην δεύτερη ενότητα γίνεται μία ολοκληρωμένη επισκόπηση των πληροφοριών, που αφορούν κρίσιμους τομείς, οι οποίοι επηρεάζουν σημαντικά την αξιοποίηση των μη επανδρωμένων αεροσκαφών, όπως το θεσμικό πλαίσιο στην Ελλάδα και την Ευρώπη, ο έλεγχος εναέριας κυκλοφορίας αλλά και βασικά στοιχεία μετεωρολογίας που επηρεάζουν τις πτήσεις των Drones. Επίσης παρουσιάζεται η επίδραση του ανθρώπινου παράγοντα, η ασφάλεια πτήσεων καθώς και οι προκλήσεις στα θέματα ιδιωτικότητας και δεοντολογίας από την αξιοποίηση τους.

Στην τρίτη και τελευταία ενότητα παρουσιάζονται όλες οι σύγχρονες εφαρμογές των μη επανδρωμένων αεροσκαφών, στις στρατιωτικές επιχειρήσεις και αποστολές, στην ασφάλεια και την πολιτική προστασία, στην τηλεπισκόπηση και την φωτογραμμετρία, στην γεωργία ακριβείας αλλά και στην δημοσιογραφία και τα μέσα μαζικής ενημέρωσης ενώ στο τέλος περιγράφονται οι δυνατότητες προστασίας από την κακόβουλη χρήση τους.

The trend in ISR is to merge ISR and strike capabilities into the same platform. Future ISR systems will be smaller, lighter, unmanned, and armed with long-range-precision-guided munitions. (Turkish Defense Industries SSB photo) In the fall of 2020, the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War provided a glimpse of what the next generation of Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) will become: precision-guided munitions with active sensors. In the past, ISR platforms primarily found targets for other systems to destroy. The recent fighting in the Caucasus, which involved two, near-equal medium powers, has shown how ISR and Precision-Guided Munitions (PGMs) are now blending to become one. During this conflict, the Azerbaijani forces used strike systems, Unmanned Air Combat Vehicles (UCAVs) and Loitering Munitions (LMs) for ISR. These systems had high-end, active sensors that generated real-time intelligence during combat. In addition, they provided accurate, real-time, battle damage assessment. In the next decade, strike systems will become smaller, less expensive, and better networked. The lessons learned for next generation ISR from this conflict is dramatic, and was a key factor in Azerbaijan's decisive victory. Some of the primary systems used by Azerbaijan, principally the TB2 UCAV and the HAROP LM, provide an important insight into the future of ISR systems.

Os drones, até pouco tempo, eram equipamentos desconhecidos para o público em geral. Em um curto período de tempo, essas máquinas passaram de um material de emprego militar e no aeromodelismo para os noticiários e para o uso do público em geral em nosso cotidiano.
Evidentemente, houve muito avanço durante a história, tanto nas funcionalidades dos drones, quanto no seu emprego e na sua regulamentação. Expondo brevemente um panorama histórico
acerca dos drones, analisamos com mais profundidade os aspectos jurídicos acerca desse tipo de aeronave.
Justamente pelos avanços tecnológicos e pela popularização do seu uso, diversos países se depararam com a necessidade de regulamentar o uso dos drones, visando afastar potenciais perigos decorrentes da utilização indiscriminada de tais equipamentos. O Brasil, por exemplo, constatou a necessidade de regulamentação há poucos anos, quando começaram a surgir indícios do seu uso em maior escala. Um exemplo disso foi a utilização de um drone por uma pizzaria na cidade de Santo
André, na grande São Paulo, para a entrega da encomenda, com todo o percurso filmado e disponibilizado. Tal episódio repercutiu na mídia e tanto a Agência Nacional de Transporte Aéreo quanto a Força Aérea Brasileira intervieram na situação e iniciaram uma investigação sobre o
ocorrido. Além do uso particular dos drones, também merece especial atenção o seu emprego pelo Poder Público, que, igualmente, deve observar determinadas restrições, como é o caso da observância dos direitos fundamentais dos cidadãos. Desse modo, o problema a ser resolvido no decorrer do texto refere-se à seguinte questão central: quais são as limitações jurídicas que incidem sobre o uso de drones em território brasileiro pelos diversos atores sociais? Não obstante os limites objetivos destrinchados no decorrer deste artigo, também busca-se trazer à tona uma discussão importante acerca da hipervigilância e os impactos do uso de drones nesse cenário. Ainda que não se trate de questão muito abordada por juristas brasileiros, faz-se necessário implantar esse debate para maior aprofundamento, na sociedade.

Italy has been one of the first countries in the world to enact ad hoc regulations on drones. Therefore, the Italian approach may constitute a model for many regulations to come; nonetheless, the legal literature seems to overlook the phenomenon. In this article, I place the discourse on drones in the context of some more general considerations on the main legal issues related to the deployment of machines, including robots, in our everyday life. Indeed, most considerations apply equally to robots and drones, moving from the unrefined, albeit practical, observation that the latter are robots equipped with wings. An analysis of the intellectual property, data protection, privacy, and liability issues is carried out bearing in mind the complexity arising from the increasing implementation of cloud computing and artificial intelligence technologies. The article claims that autonomous machines will outclass human beings in all their tasks, but the horror vacui ought to be avoided: a new unforeseeable society will come. Therein, human beings – granted that a distinction between them and machines will still make sense – will not have to work in order to be able to live.
PLEASE CITE AS: G. NOTO LA DIEGA, Machine rules. Of drones, robots and the info-capitalist society, in Italian Law Journal, 2016, II, 367-404

In this paper we present SWIFTERS, a technology platform for utilising multiple UAVs in disaster management. The platform aims to provide fast situational awarene;"s and improve the effectiveness of disaster management operations by exploiting UAV deployment opportunities. The platform allows flying UAVs in a click-and-go fashion, scanning an area using multiple collaborating UAVs while receiving live video feed from the camera of the UAVs' to detect people , vehicles and carry out visual disaster assessment. This paper provides evidence of the reliability and scalability of the SWIFTERS platform in a real-life experiment with four UAVs.

Bu araştırma herhangi bir ortamda bulunan WiFi sinyal güçlerinin attırılması amacıyla gerçekleştirilmiş ve bu ortama, drone’a entegreli hareketli bir WiFi çoğaltıcı konumlandırması yaparak afet olayları gibi riskli durumlarda iletişimin daha hızlı ve daha kolay nasıl gerçekleştirilebileceğini göstermeyi hedeflemiştir. Örnek olay yöntemiyle yürütülen bu çalışmada öncelikle WiFi çoğaltıcı drone’a entegre edilmiş ve sahaya çıkabilir hale getirilmiştir. Drone, belirlenen ortamda uçurulmadan önce gerekli ölçümler yapılmış ve ortam parametre değerleri elde edilmiştir. Kaynaktan gelen WiFi sinyallerini çoğaltmak ve geniş bir alana yayılmasını sağlamak için WiFi çoğaltıcı adaptör kullanılmıştır. Bunun yanı sıra drone’a yerleştirilen kamera sayesinde, etrafın eş zamanlı olarak izlenmesine olanak tanıyan bir gözlük kullanılmıştır. Lityum-polimer bataryaya sahip olan drone’un üzerine GPS modülü bağlanmıştır. Daha sonra WiFi çoğaltıcı entegreli drone uçurulmuş, parametre değerleri yeniden kayıt altına alınmıştır. Çalışmada kullanılan INAV programı ile drone’a harita üzerinden belirli bölgeler atanmıştır ve GPS modülü sayesinde drone bu bölgelerde otonom şekilde uçmuştur. Parametre sonuçları değerlendirildiğinde; drone uçurulan bölgelerde bilgisayar internet gücünde yaklaşık 2 kat, telefon internet gücünde ise yaklaşık olarak 23 kat sinyal artışı gözlenmiştir. Sonuç olarak afet yardım personellerinin, afet bölgesinde fiilen bulunmadan, INAV ve benzeri uygulamaları yöneterek drone ile arama yapabilecekleri, o bölgenin fotoğraflarını çekebilecekleri ve bölge hakkındaki bilgileri elde ederek afetzedelere hızlıca yardım edebilecekleri kanısına varılmıştır.

Not: Düzce Üniversitesi Yüksek Lisans projesidir. https://tez.yok.gov.tr/ sitesinde yayınlanmıştır. Tez no: 646963

Germany has a long history of drone development and use, reaching back to early drone trials and missile development during and between the world wars. Its first modern drone
system, the Canadian-British-German CL-89, was introduced in 1971. Today, the German armed forces, the Bundeswehr, operate a range of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), all of
which have been fielded in Afghanistan as part of the German contribution to the ISAF mission. Together with the U.K. and France, Germany is one of the leading European
drone users; its main strength as a manufacturer and user is in midsized reconnaissance drones for the army.

The Bundeswehr is likely to use drones (both intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance [ISR] and armed systems) in future military operations. It is not expected that the availability of drones will fundamentally change German operations, either in terms of the types of operations Germany will participate in (never alone, always in cooperation with NATO allies, and – if at all possible – only with a U.N. mandate) or in how these operations will be fought. Because of its risk aversion, Germany is likely to welcome the possibility to send drones rather than troops in an allied operation and may be somewhat more likely to support a multinational operation if its only contribution will be drones.

Three small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) fly at Edwards Air Force Base, CA., Aug. 21, 2019. Most small UAVs are battery powered. To extend range and endurance, UAVs are now using hydrogen fuel cell technologies. (US Air Force photo, Staff Sgt. Rachel Simones) The modern weapons of war are thirsty for electrical power. Hybrid engines and all-electric motors promise to be the future of commercial and military systems, but due to cost of replacing entire fleets of vehicles, and the reliability of petrol and diesel engines, most military forces will be tied to internal combustion technology for many years. Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), however, offer an exception. These weapons are playing an increasingly critical role in combat operations and are mostly powered by batteries. For these systems, staying in the air and operating for hours, rather than minutes, can be the difference between mission success or failure. Extending the flight time of small UAVs, therefore, is becoming a priority. There are two primary means of providing electrical power for small UAVs: batteries that store electrical energy or fuel cells that generate electrical power.

The history of photography has always been linked to that of aviation, since both inventions were created at the same time. Both creations converge again in the last five years, thanks to the drones and the cameras with which they are equipped. They were a real revolution when they appeared back in 2012 and, since then, the photography taken from the drones has had applications in fields as diverse as agriculture, architecture, advertising, journalism or security.

Singapore and other global cities are increasingly exploring the vertical space-vertical urbanism-to address challenges from land scarcity and growing urbanisation. As urbanisation can shape the nature of crime and security threats, there would be a need for vertical urbanism to be an essential consideration in the forward planning for vertical policing strategies by homeland security agencies. While threats to high-rise buildings are not new, vertical urbanism is changing the environment even as it optimises space utilisation (including lower airspace) and this may plausibly expand the attack surface of cities by presenting additional vectors for threats. Existing regulatory frameworks and policies, and operational procedures need to adapt to address the plausible threats that may ascend amid the social and economic vibrancy of the vertical space of future cities. Currently, such frameworks generally look into drone regulations and high-rise building security as separate domains rather than subsets of the vertical space. This paper employs a documentary approach to envision the vertical space and its security dimension, plausible vertical security challenges and concludes with a specific policy recommendation that may be helpful to cities including Singapore.

Reportage erschienen in taz, 14./15. März 2015, S. 25-27.

Die IDEX ist die größteWaffenmesse der Welt. Kein
anderes Land verfügt über so viele Zollfreigebiete
wie die Vereinigten Arabischen Emirate. Das
mag den Erfolg der Idex befördert haben, die 2015
bereits zum zwölften Mal stattfindet. 56 Nationen
sind in Abu Dhabi, der Hauptstadt der Emirate vertreten.
Mehr als 1.200 Unternehmen präsentieren
Verteidigungstechnologien der Zukunft, wie es in
der Terminologie der Messe heißt.
Im Angebot ist fast dasgesamte Spektrum moderner
Waffen, vom automatischen Sturmgewehr bis
zur Lenkrakete, vom gepanzerten Geländefahrzeug
bis zum unbemannten U-Boot.
Neben der Produktmesse findet in diesem Jahr
zum ersten Mal eine Konferenz zumThema „Unbemannte
Systeme“ statt. Drohnen bilden den Zukunftsmarkt
der Rustungsindustrie. (...)

When operating a machine, the operator needs to know some spatial relations, like the relative location of the target or the nearest obstacle. Often, sensors are used to derive this spatial information, and visual displays are deployed as interfaces to communicate this information to the operator. In this paper, we present psychoacoustic sonification as an alternative interface for human-machine interaction. Instead of visualizations, an interactive sound guides the operator to the desired target location, or helps her avoid obstacles in space. By considering psychoacoustics-i.e., the relationship between the physical and the perceptual attributes of sound-in the audio signal processing, we can communicate precisely and unambiguously interpretable direction and distance cues along three orthogonal axes to a user. We present exemplary use cases from various application areas where users can benefit from psychoacoustic sonification.

The drone war in Pakistan poses humanitarian, legal, ethical and political challenges. The tactic is controversial and has been condemned by the United Nations' special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings. Yet, polls have shown high support for the tactic in the United States (and to a lesser degree in the United Kingdom). Much of this has to do with the media reporting on the war, which consistently underestimates its human toll. Dubious statistics have sustained the image of a surgical war with little collateral damage. But as this article shows, there are reasons to doubt these numbers. The article argues that two interrelated factors have contributed to a flawed accounting of the war's human toll: (1) rituals of objectivity that privilege 'official sources' and (2) fetishizing of statistics as hard facts without regard for the underlying data. The coverage has also been distorted by news values that downplay or ignore deaths in distant places unless they cross an inordinately high threshold.

I droni sono stati ampiamente impiegati in ambito militare per le attività di sorveglianza. Nel corso degli ultimi anni queste tecnologie sono arrivate sul mercato anche per uso ricreativo ma, più volte, grandi player dell’e-commerce come Amazon, hanno suggerito e sperimentato delle applicazioni commerciali per questa tecnologia innovativa, l'articolo ne propone una rassegna in ottica ecologica

When operating a machine, the operator needs to know some spatial relations, like the relative location of the target or the nearest obstacle. Often, sensors are used to derive this spatial information, and visual displays are deployed as interfaces to communicate this information to the operator. In this paper, we present psychoacoustic sonification as an alternative interface for human-machine interaction. Instead of visualizations, an interactive sound guides the operator to the desired target location, or helps her avoid obstacles in space. By considering psychoacoustics --- i.e., the relationship between the physical and the perceptual attributes of sound --- in the audio signal processing, we can communicate precisely and unambiguously interpretable direction and distance cues along three orthogonal axes to a user. We present exemplary use cases from various application areas where users can benefit from psychoacoustic sonification.

In an environment where drone technology is being openly sold on a massive scale across the global market and countless countries are striving to build and obtain their own drone fleets, it is deeply troubling that the general consensus around the world is that America uses drones in a manner that makes questionable targeting and covert killing commonplace. The lack of concern within American corridors of power seems predicated on lazy assurance that no real rivals are emerging to learn from these ambiguities and obfuscations.

On 9 March 2017, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAS) of Qatar issued regulations covering registration requirements and permissible uses of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), commonly known as drones (hereafter referred to as the Drone Regulations). The Drone Regulations aim to strike a balance among concerns of safety, privacy, and the highly-valued utility of drones.

For corrosion engineers to take Nondestructive Testing (NDT) measurements at height, currently they may need to utilize a lift, scaffolding, ladders, inspection trucks with elevated baskets, rope work, catwalks, cranes and rigging or other solutions. NDT inspection programs can dramatically increase the safety and integrity of infrastructure, industrial and manufacturing assets, access requirements in performing these inspections introduces risk. NDT inspection sites often require access to elevated areas and the use of equipment such as personal fall protection (safety harness and lanyard). Working at height is dangerous, due to the possibility of falls, as well as being time-consuming due to access. In certain instances, it may also require taking an asset, such as a flare stack, offline to allow it to cool so it can be accessed to take NDT readings. Use of handheld digital testing devices is very common in these scenarios.
Utilizing an aerial robotics platform for contact-based NDT measurements such as Dry Film Thickness (DFT), Surface Profile (SP), or Ultrasonic Thickness (UT) allows workers to remain safely on the ground. Further, since there is no need to move a lift, scaffolding or ladders and minimal movements required by the corrosion engineer or the robotic operator, the NDT measurement process can be faster in addition to being safer.

This paper introduces a new concept of unmanned aerial vehicles-UAV's-are called Smart Flying Platforms (SFP). The main objective of this paper is to evaluate how smart flying platforms in the present and near future can play a crucial role to help to fight terrorism. Basically, we need to assume that in any terrorist attack always exist the high possibility of damage in the people, infrastructure, transportation systems, telecommunications systems access, and basic services immediately. We propose in three areas the uses of smart flying platforms in the case to fight terrorism response: (i) the aerial monitoring pre-terrorist attack evaluation; (ii) the destruction of terrorist logistic and cargo delivery; (iii) the post-terrorist attack aerial evaluation.

Once confined to science fiction, killer robots will soon be a reality. Both the USA and the UK are currently developing weapons systems that could be capable of autonomously targeting and killing enemy combatants. These capabilities are only 25 years away. According to Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Convention and customary international law, weapons systems must be capable of operating within then principles of International Humanitarian Law (IHL). This paper will demonstrate that without significant restrictions on the use of Autonomous Weapons Systems (AWS) or the creation of a new legal framework, the use AWS is problematic. First, there are legitimate concerns that AWS are, by their nature, incapable of adhering to IHL principles. Second, there is a more fundamental problem: the principles of IHL are actually insufficient to address the unique concerns regarding AWS. Finally, the solutions proposed by proponents of AWS do not sufficiently address these concerns. A legal solution beyond the general principles of IHL must be developed.

Literature Review of Harvard's Library concerning lawful Lethal Targeting and the-non "US Kill Chain" as alleged by Curren on The Intercept, who leaked classified documents in order to try to make a case against the United States' practices. The paper reminds us the Lethal Targeting is against known International Terrorists who would do nothing but cause extreme harm to society as we know it.

Drones and drone-mounted sensors have a multitude of potential uses for local authorities and municipalities. While early-adopters have piloted and tested the use of drones for specific scenarios, widespread adoption and implementation requires appropriate planning and development of relevant governance, oversight, and controls to ensure that data protection rights and other fundamental rights are respected, and data protection laws complied with in the gathering and processing of data using drone-mounted sensors and associated technologies. This article provides an overview of the evolution of drone use scenarios and a snapshot of the current state of the art in respect of the balancing of the utility of dronemounted sensors against the data protection and privacy impacts of these technologies. We set out a taxonomy of use case scenarios for drones and drone mounted sensors. It is recommended that this taxonomy is developed as a structure framework to support scalable and repeatable processes for assessing and mitigating data protection risks in the operation of drones and drone-mounted sensors.

Dugong populations are decreasing worldwide due to human activities. Reproductive behaviour observations are valuable due to the scarce information on dugong reproductive behaviour, which vary between populations. Surveys were carried out to document dugong reproductive behaviour at the island of Koh Libong, province of Trang, Thailand. Aerial images of dugong reproductive behaviour were captured using a zoom camera mounted on a drone. Images clearly revealed several stages of matting (following, approaching and stimulating, pairing, mounting and separating). In addition, we also identify a possible method to track individual dugongs by recording the tusk scars in dorsal regions using drone images. This study highlights the importance of small quadcopter drones as a cost-efficient tool to document dugong behaviour such as mating, identification of individuals, measurement of body mass index, contributing to an effective conservation effort.

The Mantarraya Negra Smart Platform V.8 shows a series of photos about this new special experimental prototype that is using advanced artificial intelligence programming and a new aerodynamic structure. The Mantarraya Negra Smart Platform V.8 is able to be a submarine and an airplane at the same time. This experimental prototype can fly long distances and can land in small spaces under any weather condition.

American drone utilization is predicated upon the exclusive and exceptional ability of the United States to dictate terms to all other countries and to assume that such technical dictatorship will continue on in perpetuity, thereby eliminating the need to be concerned about the lack of uniformity, transparency, and logical consistency in international norms and ethical standards. A cursory investigation reveals just how presumptuous this position may be: 2013 seemed to be a stellar year for drone achievement around the world. In fact, ten years from now we may all look back on 2013 and consider it to be the drone ‘tipping point.’

On 9 March 2017, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAS) of Qatar issued regulations covering registration requirements and permissible uses of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), commonly known as drones (hereafter referred to as the Drone Regulations). The Drone Regulations aim to strike a balance among concerns of safety, privacy, and the highly-valued utility of drones.