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Message no. 1
From: Lehlan Decker <decker@****.FSU.EDU>
Subject: Water Drones...
Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 15:20:09 -0500
I was just digging through the net, and Jon's comment about
SMugglers Haven, made me start thinking. Were any water borne drones
listed in R2? Or cyberpirates. (My copies are at home).
I seem to remember some underwater drones, but I was thinking of
a small armda of rigger controlled sailboat drones, or speed boat
drones. Fast Manuerable and hard to hit. They may not pack much of a
punch, but enough of them together could cause some problems.
Just my thoughts during a slow period at work. :)

--
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Lehlan Decker 644-4534 Systems Development
decker@****.fsu.edu http://www.scri.fsu.edu/~decker
--------------------------------------------------------------------
"Uh-Oh Toto, it doesn't look like we're gods anymore."
Message no. 2
From: Fade <runefo@***.UIO.NO>
Subject: Re: Water Drones...
Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 22:08:16 +0000
> I was just digging through the net, and Jon's comment about
> SMugglers Haven, made me start thinking. Were any water borne drones
> listed in R2? Or cyberpirates. (My copies are at home).
> I seem to remember some underwater drones, but I was thinking of
> a small armda of rigger controlled sailboat drones, or speed boat
> drones. Fast Manuerable and hard to hit. They may not pack much of a
> punch, but enough of them together could cause some problems.
> Just my thoughts during a slow period at work. :)

It seems that they deal with the problem in Cyberpirates.. you can
probably have surface drones with little problem, but subsurface ones
*must* be wire guided - there is no other effective way of
communicating with (and thus controlling) the drone. So they haven't
solved that problem still.. or at least, no corporation has told
about doing so yet.

BUt you seem to mention surface boats, not subsurface ones, so I
don't see why not...

--
Fade

And the Prince of Lies said:
"To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:
Better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven."
-John Milton, Paradise Lost
Message no. 3
From: James Lindsay <jlindsay@******.CA>
Subject: Re: Water Drones...
Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 06:25:21 GMT
On Fri, 6 Mar 1998 22:08:16 +0000, Fade wrote:

> > I was just digging through the net, and Jon's comment about
> > SMugglers Haven, made me start thinking. Were any water borne drones
> > listed in R2? Or cyberpirates. (My copies are at home).
> > I seem to remember some underwater drones, but I was thinking of
> > a small armda of rigger controlled sailboat drones, or speed boat
> > drones. Fast Manuerable and hard to hit. They may not pack much of a
> > punch, but enough of them together could cause some problems.
> > Just my thoughts during a slow period at work. :)
>
> It seems that they deal with the problem in Cyberpirates.. you can
> probably have surface drones with little problem, but subsurface ones
> *must* be wire guided - there is no other effective way of
> communicating with (and thus controlling) the drone. So they haven't
> solved that problem still.. or at least, no corporation has told
> about doing so yet.

Submersible drones would be perfectly ok, despite the limited use of
wireless control. You could simply provide them with detailed autopilot or
"chipped" instructions so that they can operate on their own beyond you
control. They wouldn't be as useful as ground and/or air drones, but they
would still have their place...



James W. Lindsay Vancouver, British Columbia
"http://www.prosperoimaging.com/ground_zero";
ICQ: 7521644 (Sharkey)

Mano au mano, the "Professor"
would kick MacGyver's ass.
Message no. 4
From: Lehlan Decker <decker@****.FSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Water Drones...
Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 09:24:55 -0500
On Mon, Mar 09, 1998 at 06:25:21AM +0000, James Lindsay wrote:
> On Fri, 6 Mar 1998 22:08:16 +0000, Fade wrote:
>
> > > I was just digging through the net, and Jon's comment about
> > > SMugglers Haven, made me start thinking. Were any water borne drones
> > > listed in R2? Or cyberpirates. (My copies are at home).
> > > I seem to remember some underwater drones, but I was thinking of
> > > a small armda of rigger controlled sailboat drones, or speed boat
> > > drones. Fast Manuerable and hard to hit. They may not pack much of a
> > > punch, but enough of them together could cause some problems.
> > > Just my thoughts during a slow period at work. :)
> >
> > It seems that they deal with the problem in Cyberpirates.. you can
> > probably have surface drones with little problem, but subsurface ones
> > *must* be wire guided - there is no other effective way of
> > communicating with (and thus controlling) the drone. So they haven't
> > solved that problem still.. or at least, no corporation has told
> > about doing so yet.
>
> Submersible drones would be perfectly ok, despite the limited use of
> wireless control. You could simply provide them with detailed autopilot or
> "chipped" instructions so that they can operate on their own beyond you
> control. They wouldn't be as useful as ground and/or air drones, but they
> would still have their place...
>
This brings up an interesting point. (Oh and I like the idea of
prerecorded instructions, hadn't though of that for some reason).
Today, several forms of wireless underwater communciations devices
exist, although their range is limited etc. If the tech doesn't
evolve, seems like you could still have remote operated uw drones, but
with limited range, and the possiblity of interference.


--
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Lehlan Decker 644-4534 Systems Development
decker@****.fsu.edu http://www.scri.fsu.edu/~decker
--------------------------------------------------------------------
"Uh-Oh Toto, it doesn't look like we're gods anymore."
Message no. 5
From: Rune Fostervoll <runefo@***.UIO.NO>
Subject: Re: Water Drones...
Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 16:22:24 GMT
> > It seems that they deal with the problem in Cyberpirates.. you can
> > probably have surface drones with little problem, but subsurface ones
> > *must* be wire guided - there is no other effective way of
> > communicating with (and thus controlling) the drone. So they haven't
> > solved that problem still.. or at least, no corporation has told
> > about doing so yet.
>
> Submersible drones would be perfectly ok, despite the limited use of
> wireless control. You could simply provide them with detailed autopilot or
> "chipped" instructions so that they can operate on their own beyond you
> control. They wouldn't be as useful as ground and/or air drones, but they
> would still have their place...

Yah. Forgot robots, yes. They are limited because even such short
messages as firing confirmations and such would be hard to relay, so they
would have to be extremely autonomous... but they could be used, and probably
quite effectively. I'd be careful about combat uses, though, or the risk
for such things as friendly or neutral fire would be high. If you don't
mind, or only use them when you are fairly certain there's only hostiles
around.. no problem. Robots' your drone. (Or if you have the devil's own AI in
them... but that's quite expensive.).

(What is the subsurface signal transmission rate, BTW? Anyone remember? I
think it's a byte a second.. somewhere in that vicinity, +/- 10000%. Far too
low for speech at any rate.).
Message no. 6
From: Geoff Skellams <geoff.skellams@*********.COM.AU>
Subject: Re: Water Drones...
Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 09:14:48 +1000
On Shadowrun Discussion, Rune Fostervoll[SMTP:runefo@***.UIO.NO] wrote:
> Yah. Forgot robots, yes. They are limited because even such short
> messages as firing confirmations and such would be hard to relay, so
they
> would have to be extremely autonomous... but they could be used, and
probably
> quite effectively. I'd be careful about combat uses, though, or the
risk
> for such things as friendly or neutral fire would be high. If you
don't
> mind, or only use them when you are fairly certain there's only
hostiles
> around.. no problem. Robots' your drone. (Or if you have the devil's
own AI in
> them... but that's quite expensive.).
>
With the advances in fuzzy logic and stuff, a semi-autonomous
robot could be quite useful. I read a paper a couple of years ago where
someone in the US was using fuzzy logic to build an automated wingman
for flight simulators. So far they had only gotten it to stay in
formation with a human pilot flying a racetrack pattern, but did fairly
well. The plans were to continuing developing the rulebase to include
combat functionality as well.
That was in '96. Given another 50 or 60 years, the fuzzy
rulebase should have been fairly well established, and when combined
with neural network programming, should be able to cope with combat
situations. It might not be able to come up with something new and
innovative, but it should be able to cope. Provided the target
recognition side of things is well developed (and I can see no reason
why it wouldn't be), then robot combat could be a very real possibilty.

> (What is the subsurface signal transmission rate, BTW? Anyone
remember? I
> think it's a byte a second.. somewhere in that vicinity, +/- 10000%.
Far too
> low for speech at any rate.).

IIRC, naval signal traffic to submarines is somewhere in the vicinity of
75 bits/second. Mainly because of the low frequency you need to use to
get a signal to go any decent distance underwater.

cheers
Geoff
--
Geoff Skellams R&D - Tower Software
Email Address: geoff.skellams@*********.com.au
Homepage: http://www.towersoft.com.au/staff/geoff/
ICQ Number: 2815165

"The Stoat - pound for pound the most dangerous creature on the face of
the planet"
- Chris Irwin, spouting crap during "Over Port & Cigars..."
Message no. 7
From: The Bookworm <Thomas.M.Price@*******.EDU>
Subject: Re: Water Drones...
Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 21:42:52 -0600
On Tue, 10 Mar 1998, Rune Fostervoll wrote:

> (What is the subsurface signal transmission rate, BTW? Anyone remember? I
> think it's a byte a second.. somewhere in that vicinity, +/- 10000%. Far too
> low for speech at any rate.).

Data rates depen on your data transmission method im sure. As for
underwater voice comunication we have had that for decades. Its called a
Growler phone IIRC. basicaly a FM Sonar Set. Low power, short range,
full of static and omni-directional but it works :).

Thomas Price
aka The Bookworm
thomas.m.price@*******.edu
tmprice@***********.com
Message no. 8
From: Robert Watkins <robert.watkins@******.COM>
Subject: Re: Water Drones...
Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 13:57:13 +1000
The Bookworm writes:
>Data rates depen on your data transmission method im sure. As for
>underwater voice comunication we have had that for decades. Its called a
>Growler phone IIRC. basicaly a FM Sonar Set. Low power, short range,
>full of static and omni-directional but it works :).


Someone with more physics knowledge could answer this: How hard would it be
to create a "focused" sound beam? And could such a sonar setup be used to
control a drone (with a bit of latency, but not too much over short
distances)?

--
.sig deleted to conserve electrons. robert.watkins@******.com
Message no. 9
From: David Buehrer <dbuehrer@******.CARL.ORG>
Subject: Re: Water Drones...
Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 08:10:21 -0700
Geoff Skellams wrote:
/
/ With the advances in fuzzy logic and stuff, a semi-autonomous
/ robot could be quite useful. I read a paper a couple of years ago where
/ someone in the US was using fuzzy logic to build an automated wingman
/ for flight simulators. So far they had only gotten it to stay in
/ formation with a human pilot flying a racetrack pattern, but did fairly
/ well. The plans were to continuing developing the rulebase to include
/ combat functionality as well.
/ That was in '96. Given another 50 or 60 years, the fuzzy
/ rulebase should have been fairly well established, and when combined
/ with neural network programming, should be able to cope with combat
/ situations. It might not be able to come up with something new and
/ innovative, but it should be able to cope. Provided the target
/ recognition side of things is well developed (and I can see no reason
/ why it wouldn't be), then robot combat could be a very real possibilty.

It's allready taken care of. Check out the rules in the RBB or VR2 on
autopilot ratings. Autopilot 4 is pretty autonomous.

:)

-David
--
"You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it."
- Samuel Butler
--
ShadowRN GridSec
email: dbuehrer@******.carl.org
http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/1068/homepage.htm
Message no. 10
From: Wafflemiesters <evamarie@**********.NET>
Subject: Re: Water Drones...
Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 18:20:31 -0600
The Bookworm writes:
>Data rates depen on your data transmission method im sure. As for
>underwater voice comunication we have had that for decades. Its called a
>Growler phone IIRC. basicaly a FM Sonar Set. Low power, short range,
>full of static and omni-directional but it works :).

Someone with more physics knowledge could answer this: How hard would it
be
to create a "focused" sound beam? And could such a sonar setup be used
to
control a drone (with a bit of latency, but not too much over short
distances)?

+++===+++===+++===+++===+++

I haven't read what "cyberpirates" has to say, but when it was mentioned
that underwater RC drones wouldn't work, my fisrt thoughts were LF waves
and Sonar.
Low frequency radio waves penetrate water well, but as mentioned carry
limited data. Sonar type tech could carry a bit more, but is really
tracable and probably interference prone, although dolphins seem to be
easy enough to record. :)
Either system would probaly not allow true rigging, but might allow the
drone to be used in "Captains Chair" mode. The latency with sound would
be pretty bad (although sound travles FASTER underwater than in air),
and would restrict range, and add penalties to most tests at longer
distance. I'd also restrict the dice the rigger could use from
"sensors" or any other dice the drone or rigger "gave" to each other.
Basically, you'd have a really crappy interface with the drone, even if
the drone itself was SOTA. Sogiving the computer commands might
actually work BETTER than trying to control it yourself.

As for Focused "sound beams"- Focusing sound is possible, but not in the
sense of a "beam" per se- AFAIK, there is no such thing as "coherent
sound", the sonic equivalent of a laser beam. However, with a phased
array of sonic transducers, you could easily make sound highly
directional. This would be technologically easy, and only costly in the
sense of needing many (from about 98 to 347) transducers, which are
probaly pretty cheap to make with SR tech.
There would, however, be a minimum size needed for such an array. Any
good physics book chapter on waves could explain why and just how to
figure the effect (the terms are weird, but the ideas not so hard to
grasp). Basically, the bigger the array, the better the "focus". I'd
say about 10.6 to 21.3 times the sonic wavelength should do the trick.
Larger arrays would have better "focus", meaning less inteference, maybe
better range, and probably a higher "bandwidth", which I'd translate as
allowing the rigger to acsess higher level sensors, etc.
A phased sonar array would also make a great sensor, and could be used
for spoofing. Battleships today used phased radar arrays. AFAIK, even
very simple sonar incorporates some phase info processesing, but doesn't
use phased emitor arrays.

The problem is, a drone probaly wouldn't be big enough to carry a phased
array, and you need two way communication. The same basically goes for
LF radio- you need a big antenna to recieve it, and bigger to broadcast.

Mongoose
Message no. 11
From: Joel Agee and Jae Hyland <joel.jae@********.ATT.NET>
Subject: Re: Water Drones...
Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 19:20:58 -0800
>The Bookworm writes:
>>Data rates depen on your data transmission method im sure. As for
>>underwater voice comunication we have had that for decades. Its called a
>>Growler phone IIRC. basicaly a FM Sonar Set. Low power, short range,
>>full of static and omni-directional but it works :)
>
>Someone with more physics knowledge could answer this: How hard would it be
>to create a "focused" sound beam? And could such a sonar setup be used to
>control a drone (with a bit of latency, but not too much over short
>distances)?

It wouldn't be hard at all, so long as you limit your definition of
"focused". Just use a parabolic dish with the speaker at the focal
point. Think of the microphones used to listen in on specific players
on the field at a football (any flavor) game, but working in reverse.
You would want to use ultrasonic frequencies -- although these would
require a lot of power and drop off more quickly, the higher the
frequency, the wider the bandwidth. The modems most of us are using are
capped off at ~12kHz (if memory serves; not my field), and they can
transmit 3.3 kb/sec. If anyone is *really* interested in the size of
bandwidth, I'm sure someone on the list remembers their EM theory better
than I. Higher frequencies also propogate through the transmitting
medium more quickly than lower frequencies.
Hmmm. The higher frequencies would also scatter more quickly, placing
a limit on range that would decrease as bandwidth increases. Therefore,
there would be a "sweet spot" in the distance vs throughput curve that
would work for riggers. The math is left as an excersize for the
reader...
Anyway, using the dish, project the sound in a cylinder towards the
drone. You might want to move the speaker in towards the dish from the
focus a bit to give an expanding cone of sound so you don't have to
track the drone precisely (which is why a blue-green laser isn't such a
hot idea).

Let me know if this was helpful, or if I was just gibbering.

Joel

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