by Keumars Afifi-Sabet, published on Live Science, March 7, 2024
The scientist who configured a small drone to target people with facial recognition and chase them at full speed warns we have no defenses against such weapons.
It only takes a few hours to configure a small, commercially available drone to hunt down a target by itself, a scientist has warned.
Luis Wenus, an entrepreneur and engineer, incorporated an artificial intelligence (AI) system into a small drone to chase people around “as a game,” he wrote in a post on March 2 on X, formerly known as Twitter. But he soon realized it could easily be configured to contain an explosive payload.
Collaborating with Robert Lukoszko, another engineer, he configured the drone to use an object-detection model to find people and fly toward them at full speed, he said. The engineers also built facial recognition into the drone, which works at a range of up to 33 feet (10 meters). This means a weaponized version of the drone could be used to attack a specific person or set of targets.
we built an AI-controlled homing/killer drone — full video pic.twitter.com/xJVlkswKaq
— Luis Wenus (@luiswenus) March 2, 2024
Wenus said his experiment showed that society urgently needs to build anti-drone systems for civilian spaces where large crowds could gather. There are several countermeasures that society can build, according to Robin Radar, including cameras, acoustic sensors and radar to detect drones. Disrupting them, however, could require technologies such as radio frequency jammers, GPS spoofers, net guns, as well as high-energy lasers.
While such weapons haven’t been deployed in civilian environments, they have been previously conceptualized and deployed in the context of warfare. Ukraine, for example, has developed explosive drones in response to Russia’s invasion, according to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).
The U.S. military is also working on ways to build and control swarms of small drones that can attack targets. It follows the U.S. Navy’s efforts after it first demonstrated that it could control a swarm of 30 drones with explosives in 2017, according to MIT Technology Review.
*Featured Image: Luis Wenus, an entrepreneur and engineer, incorporated AI and facial recognition into the small drone so it could chase people down at full speed. (Image credit: simonkr via Getty Images)
