New Scientist - USA (2019-09-28)

10 | New Scientist | 28 September 2019

TURKEY is to become the first

nation to use drones able to find,

track and kill people without

human intervention.

Defence firms in the country

recently started producing armed,

human-operated drones and

Turkey is reported to have used

them hundreds of times in north-

west Syria. Now, Turkish defence

company STM has announced

that the nation’s army will start

using its Kargu drones early next

year in Syria.

These 7-kilogram quadcopters

are intended to be used as part

of a cooperative swarm. A video

posted on YouTube in July shows

20 Kargu drones flying together,

automatically changing formation

and carrying out a simulated

attack on a ground target.

Like other drones, the Kargu can

be directly controlled by a person.

But it can also fly autonomously

without a radio link, making it

immune to someone trying to jam

the control signal. It can be set to

attack a point on the map or seek

out a specific person or object

when it gets to a location.

STM says a machine-learning

algorithm allows the drone to

locate, track and identify different

types of target, such as tanks or

people. Each drone carries a

warhead that detonates when it

flies into its target. Its battery

provides up to half an hour of

flying time. STM says the drone

can return to base if it doesn’t

find a target, and that it is cheaper

than a comparable missile.

The drones look plausible, says

Stuart Russell at the University of

California, Berkeley. “All of the

individual capabilities have been

demonstrated elsewhere and

most are available in commercial

products,” he says. “Nothing

here requires sophisticated

new research.”

Previous munitions such as the

Israeli Harop drone can seek out

radar emitters and attack them

autonomously, but the Kargu

drone can target people. STM

hasn’t replied to New Scientist’s

request for comment.

“To my knowledge, this is

the first that talks about ‘facial

recognition’ and ‘anti-personnel’

capabilities,” says Russell.

Other nations have held back

from deploying autonomous

systems. The US Pentagon says its

drones will always be under direct

human control. However, there

are no global legal restrictions on

“killer robots” choosing their own

targets, despite strong discussion

and campaigning at the UN.

Proponents of the technology

believe such drones could be

better at finding their target than

traditional weapons, so could

result in fewer civilian casualties.

However, others say

autonomous weapons won’t

be able to make the nuanced

judgements required, for

example, to distinguish a bus

full of children from one carrying

troops. There are also issues

over who is held accountable

if something goes wrong and

whether machines should make

life-or-death decisions. ❚

Military technology

David Hambling

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News

The Turkish army is

reported to regularly use

radio-controlled drones

The brain

Man sees world

in miniature after

having a stroke

A MAN whose brain was damaged

by a stroke now sees all objects and

people about a third smaller than

their actual size.

The 66-year-old had a stroke in

December 2017 that cut off oxygen

to the back right of his brain. He

noticed afterwards that everything

appeared strangely smaller than

normal. For example, at a clothing

shop, he mistakenly picked up an

extra-large T-shirt thinking it was

his usual medium size, and he

thought his wife must have washed

their curtains in hot water because

they looked like they had shrunk.

By comparing familiar objects

and people with his memory of their

actual sizes, he realised they now all

appeared about 30 per cent smaller.

To try to understand what was

going on, Nils van den Berg at the

University of Amsterdam in the

Netherlands and his colleagues

devised a series of tests for the

man, who they refer to as DN.

In one test, DN had to visually

estimate the size of 10 different

cubes on a table in front of him.

Consistent with his subjective

experience, he estimated each

cube to be about 30 per cent

smaller than 11 other people did.

This distorted size perception

seemed to be related to problems

with DN’s left visual field. For

example, when he looked at two

cubes sitting next to each other, he

thought the left cube was smaller

than the right one, even when it was

the same size or bigger. Computer

tests showed that he also had

difficulties identifying the shape,

location and motion of objects in

his left visual field (Neurocase,

doi.org/dbqw). This makes sense,

since information from the left

visual field is usually processed by

the back right of the brain, which

is where DN’s stroke damage

occurred, says van den Berg.

DN has now learned ways to cope

with his altered perception of the

world. For example, he estimates

the size of unknown objects – like

doorways – by comparing them

with familiar objects. ❚

Alice Klein

Autonomous killer drones set

to be used by Turkey in Syria

“He thought his wife must

have washed their curtains

in hot water because they

looked like they’d shrunk”

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