Monday, August 29, 2022

💣 Landmine-hunting drones

Plus: Art of the future | Monday, August 29, 2022
 
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Axios What's Next
By Alex Fitzpatrick, Jennifer A. Kingson and Joann Muller · Aug 29, 2022

Landmines are among humanity's nastiest innovations — but drone tech is now helping find buried mines before they kill, Alex reports today.

Today's Smart Brevity count: 914 words ... 3½ minutes.

 
 
1 big thing: Landmine-hunting drones
A Draganfly drone.

Photo courtesy of Draganfly

 

The landmines that plague Ukraine following six months of drawn-out fighting have a new enemy as minesweeping teams get a boost from high-tech drones, Alex Fitzpatrick reports.

The big picture: As much as 62,000 square miles of Ukrainian land could be "contaminated" by mines, per Kyiv's most recent estimate. Removing all those explosives-in-waiting will take years, if not decades.

Why it matters: Landmines are indiscriminate, killing both soldiers and civilians, and pose a threat even well after a conflict ends.

  • Mines killed or injured at least 7,073 people around the world in 2020, per the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor. Civilians made up 80% of those casualties, and among that group, at least half were children.
  • Drones, robots and similar tech can help reduce the inherent danger of locating buried mines.

Driving the news: Canadian drone-maker Draganfly is supplying demining groups in Ukraine with a handful of UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) decked out with a suite of sensors designed to map areas with suspected mines.

  • Those sensors can include magnetometers, several different kinds of cameras, radar and more, says Draganfly CEO Cameron Chell.
  • Draganfly expects to have nearly two dozen mine-spotting drones flying in Ukraine by year's end.

Each kind of sensor has strengths and weaknesses.

  • Magnetometers, for instance, aren't useful for detecting mines largely made of plastic (as many are). But combining data from each sensor can help suss out mines from other buried "clutter," as mine hunters call harmless detritus.
  • Machine learning is helping to automate the process, with minesweeping software getting better at distinguishing between mines and clutter over time.

Yes, but: The drones can't dig up mines themselves. They're basically spotters, pointing out potential areas of interest for human investigators.

  • Demining is still grueling work, and drones won't make a major difference until and unless the approach can be scaled — which will take time and money.

What they're saying: "The standard now for demining is largely just using chopsticks with little prodders to poke in the ground," says Fronefield Crawford III, a Franklin & Marshall College professor who's part of a group working on mine detection using land-based robots. "So using technology really is overdue for this kind of project."

What analysts initially believed would be a days-long battle in Ukraine quickly become a war of attrition, and the longer the fighting continues, the nastier the landmine problem will get.

  • The United States, meanwhile, has committed $89 million to anti-landmine efforts in Ukraine.

What's next: The lessons Draganfly and demining groups learn about drone-based minesweeping in Ukraine could be replicated in other heavily mined countries, like Afghanistan.

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2. Beware in-app browsers
Illustration of a phone screen displaying a person peeking through blinds with binoculars.

Illustration: Megan Robinson/Axios

 

Web browsers built into popular apps like Facebook and TikTok can potentially open users to privacy and security risks, Axios' Ina Fried and Sam Sabin write.

Driving the news: Security researcher Felix Krause recently published a series of findings suggesting that many in-app browsers contain code letting developers monitor what users tap or type.

Yes, but: It's hard to say whether developers are actually using the data collected from in-app browsers.

  • TikTok said Krause's findings are "incorrect and misleading" and that it doesn't "collect keystroke or text inputs" through the code identified in the report.
  • Facebook said it developed the code in question to allow it to honor users' "do not track" preferences and still send aggregated data for ad targeting.

Neither Apple nor Google commented on whether they have seen examples of in-app browsers collecting data beyond what is expected or allowed.

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3. Sports streaming headaches
Data: Axios research; Chart: Jacque Schrag/Axios

Sports streaming was supposed to make life easier for fans. But with so many options out there, it's starting to turn into one big mess, Axios' Jeff Tracy and Sara Fischer report.

Why it matters: Die-hard fans must now combine a live sports TV package with specialized services, paying more than ever before.

State of play: Today's sports streaming landscape is scattered, to put it mildly.

  • Leagues like the NFL are investing in their own services to gather more money and data from fans. Niche sports like gymnastics and poker have their own services too.
  • Networks have been spending big to keep up in the streaming wars. NBCU's Peacock bought the exclusive U.S. rights to the WWE's uber-popular streamer for over $1 billion in 2021, for instance.
  • Regional sports networks, like the New England Sports Network, have joined the fray.

The big picture: At some point, streaming needs to get cheaper and easier for fans who want to follow multiple teams and leagues.

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4. 📸 Chile's lithium mines
visitors stand atop a large mound of salt bi-product from lithium production at a lithium mine in the Atacama Desert on August 24, 2022 in Salar de Atacama, Chile.

Photo: John Moore/Getty Images

 

An aerial view of a lithium mine in Chile's Atacama Desert.

  • The mine is run by the North Carolina-based Albemarle Corp., one of the world's leading suppliers of lithium for use in electric vehicle (EV) batteries.

At the plant seen above, liquid brine is pumped out from underneath sweeping salt flats and left to evaporate in a series of ponds for about a year and a half.

  • The end result: Material with a 6% concentration of lithium, which is then sent to be processed for eventual use in EV batteries.
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5. One fun thing: Past artists' visions of the future
Photo: Left:

Left: "Auto rollers," Jean-Marc Côté et al. circa 1900; Right: Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling rollerblading on the set of "Barbie" in Los Angeles, in 2022. Photo: MEGA/GC Images

 

What's Next usually focuses on, well, what's next. But today we're going back in time.

  • Two of Axios' visual journalists, Aïda Amer and Shoshana Gordon, curated a series of images showing what people in bygone eras imagined the future would bring.

Why it matters: Our wildest dreams are sometimes not too far off from reality. Though we may not get the details right, it's striking how often we get close.

Robot conductors:

1939: Elektro, a mechanical man at the New York World's Fair, "conducts" a cellist. Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images
2017: "Yumi" becomes the first robot to conduct a charity opera concert. Photo: Laura Lezza/Getty Images

Electric trains:

~1900: "Electric trains" by French artist Jean-Marc Côté, who created "En L'an 2000," a series of postcards predicting what life would look like a century later. Image: via Public Domain Review
2022: A Japan Railways shinkansen bullet train leaves the platform in the town of Karuizawa, Nagano Prefecture. Photo: Behrouz Mehri/AFP via Getty Images

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A hearty thanks to What's Next copy editor Amy Stern.

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