"Patrick was there first" news

Posted by: tfabris

Re: "Patrick was there first" news - 21/05/2007 19:15

I take issue with this paragraph in the article:

Quote:
The machines, which are flown by remote control or using pre-programmed GPS navigation systems, are silent and can be fitted with night-vision cameras.

Define "Silent".

Posted by: CrackersMcCheese

Re: "Patrick was there first" news - 21/05/2007 20:05

Four electric motors? Probably noticeable depending on the situation. Next to a busy road you'd be hard pushed to hear it.

Posted by: Cris

Re: "Patrick was there first" news - 21/05/2007 20:30

I saw this on the news today.

What I don't get is the boys over at Draganfly have been doing this for years, they have a scaled up model that is in active use for this sort of stuff already.

Cheers

Cris.

Posted by: FireFox31

Re: "Patrick was there first" news - 22/05/2007 23:33

I wonder about this and all other surveillance cameras. Can they really take a picture good enough to identify the perpetrator? Maybe with the "advances" in HD, we'll see cams with 1080p. "See the pores of sweat on the criminal's face!"

Posted by: Tim

Re: "Patrick was there first" news - 23/05/2007 11:59

Quote:
I wonder about this and all other surveillance cameras. Can they really take a picture good enough to identify the perpetrator? Maybe with the "advances" in HD, we'll see cams with 1080p. "See the pores of sweat on the criminal's face!"

They claim this is based on a military version. Back in 1986, the military was fielding DTV units that could read the bumper numbers off tanks at 12km (about 7.5mi) that were light enough to go into aircraft. Since then, the technology has only gotten better. The images from some of the UAVs we are getting now is absolutely insane.

Posted by: tanstaafl.

Re: "Patrick was there first" news - 23/05/2007 16:05

Quote:
Since then, the technology has only gotten better. The images from some of the UAVs we are getting now is absolutely insane.

I have heard people say that surveillance technology is good enough now that it is possible to read automobile license plates from orbiting satellites.

Is this true, or is it an urban myth? Wouldn't there be some sort of physical limit to resolution based on the wavelengths of visible light?

tanstaafl.

Posted by: mlord

Re: "Patrick was there first" news - 23/05/2007 18:50

Quote:
Quote:
Since then, the technology has only gotten better. The images from some of the UAVs we are getting now is absolutely insane.

I have heard people say that surveillance technology is good enough now that it is possible to read automobile license plates from orbiting satellites.

Is this true, or is it an urban myth? Wouldn't there be some sort of physical limit to resolution based on the wavelengths of visible light?

Picture a Hubble Telescope in orbit, pointed at the earth.
That's what they were using 20 years ago..

Posted by: tanstaafl.

Re: "Patrick was there first" news - 24/05/2007 00:06

Quote:
Picture a Hubble Telescope in orbit, pointed at the earth.
That's what they were using 20 years ago..

Okay... but assuming I was in orbit with my own Hubble telescope, would I really be able to read license plates (or newspaper headlines or things requiring comparable resolution)?

tanstaafl.

Posted by: mlord

Re: "Patrick was there first" news - 24/05/2007 01:00

Quote:
Quote:
Picture a Hubble Telescope in orbit, pointed at the earth.
That's what they were using 20 years ago..

Okay... but assuming I was in orbit with my own Hubble telescope, would I really be able to read license plates (or newspaper headlines or things requiring comparable resolution)?

Dunno, but 20 years of improvements have gone by since then..

Posted by: Tim

Re: "Patrick was there first" news - 24/05/2007 11:42

Quote:
Quote:
Picture a Hubble Telescope in orbit, pointed at the earth.
That's what they were using 20 years ago..

Okay... but assuming I was in orbit with my own Hubble telescope, would I really be able to read license plates (or newspaper headlines or things requiring comparable resolution)?

A license plate is bigger than what you can read.

Posted by: furtive

Re: "Patrick was there first" news - 24/05/2007 11:58

Wouldn't the licence plate need to be put on the roof of the car for something in orbit to be able to see it?

Posted by: drakino

Re: "Patrick was there first" news - 24/05/2007 12:09

Only if the object in satellite is above the car. If the satellite is at a big enough angle, it could see the sides of the car. Los Angeles on Google Maps is a good example of this. The satellite taking those images was farther north then LA, so it not only saw the tops of the buildings, but also their north facing sides.

Posted by: wfaulk

Re: "Patrick was there first" news - 25/05/2007 19:40

My favorite is when Google stitches together satellite images that were taken from wildly different angles, like this area.

Posted by: tfabris

Re: "Patrick was there first" news - 25/05/2007 20:10

That is just awesome.

I wonder if they've indexed it over at www.satellite-sightseer.com ?

Posted by: gbeer

Re: "Patrick was there first" news - 25/05/2007 20:11

Three different perspectives, all stitched seamlessly.

What seems even stranger is that they were all taken at about the same time of day.

Posted by: RobotCaleb

Re: "Patrick was there first" news - 31/05/2007 18:04

It's not too farfetched to believe that the plane flew over most of LA in the same day.

Posted by: tfabris

Re: "Patrick was there first" news - 31/05/2007 22:17

Quote:
It's not too farfetched to believe that the plane flew over most of LA in the same day.

Wait, I thought those were keyhole satellite photos, not aircraft photos. Do they mix and match them?

Posted by: RobotCaleb

Re: "Patrick was there first" news - 01/06/2007 00:58

I honestly don't know. It just made the most sense to me for explaining the same day multiple angles.

Posted by: JBjorgen

Re: "Patrick was there first" news - 01/06/2007 09:15

Google Earth's picture sources: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/30/0237218

Posted by: tfabris

Re: "Patrick was there first" news - 01/06/2007 14:55

Wow, so they do use airplanes. I wonder why so many of their images are so crap, then?

Posted by: gbeer

Re: "Patrick was there first" news - 02/06/2007 20:07

What I was trying to point out was that each building is in essence a big sundial. There are three shadows that are all pointing the same direction. I guesstamate each photo was taken as exactly the same time on three different days.

I suppose it could have been done from a plane with a fancy photo rig, or maybe several planes working in parallel, but I'd bet that those particular ones are space based images.

Posted by: frog51

Re: "Patrick was there first" news - 02/06/2007 20:11

Looking at the info from Google, It makes most sense to me thinking it is from the same day, by plane, on different parts of its raster pattern.

Pretty cool either way though

Posted by: gbeer

Re: "Patrick was there first" news - 02/06/2007 20:12

Don't snort at aircraft, If you can get one in place, with a decent camera, it will always outperform sat based systems. And you can buy a lot of airplanes, pilots and av-gas for the cost of one spysat.

Posted by: tfabris

Re: "Patrick was there first" news - 03/06/2007 04:59

I know. I wasn't snorting at aircarft. I was snorting at the low quality of many of the google maps images. (I'm assuming the ones I'm thinking of are ones that weren't taken by aircraft.)

Posted by: LittleBlueThing

Re: "Patrick was there first" news - 04/06/2007 07:13

So I wondered and Googled and was surprised...

Hubble angular resolution = 0.1arcseconds = 2.7e-5deg
Orbit 600km

sin=opposite/hypotenuse
sin(0.1as)*600,000 = 30cm

I guess the Hubble could see a number plate but not read it...

Still, I suppose stars are quite big...

(Any maths errors?)

Posted by: Roger

Re: "Patrick was there first" news - 12/06/2007 14:19

One of the guys at work forwarded me this video on Google, which appears to be a French guy who's attached video goggles to his remote-controlled glider. They're even on a gimble, so they look where he looks.

"Patrick was there first" news