Research Blog 6: Future Unmanned Systems Impact

Unmanned Systems have been progressively upgrading and becoming more of an impact on human lives throughout the years. Only recently has there been more of a push and more of an insight in the general population of what unmanned system can do for humanity. One of these systems in particular will cause a large shift in how society interacts with unmanned systems. This being an unmanned ground system of the self driving vehicle, agricultural machines.

In 2009 Google Company began their tests and production of a self driving car. If/when this self driving vehicle is fully implemented into society within the next two decades a radical change in how drivers will (or in this case will not) interact with each other on the road. As the technology increases the need for human drivers behind the wheel will decrease. This could mean safer roads and conditions for people to commute. By making vehicles driver less, this would eliminate accidents that could occur from fatigue, medical conditions, drunk drivers, or general distractions that would hinder a person's ability to drive correctly. Driver less vehicles would also mean a shift in companies who use semi trucks or freight vehicles to haul items for delivery. By fitting a freight vehicle with an unmanned system this could ultimately lead to faster delivery of items to people and companies, as it would eliminate the human factor of fatigue. Though this could create a void with people who were freight drivers now being unemployed due to unmanned systems.

Agricultural vehicles are also being outfitted to become unmanned as well. These systems could ultimately cut out the large cost of farm labors and harbor more crop yield since unmanned systems are able to work 24 hours a day. This could however lead to higher unemployment rates and a decrease in the economic portion of society, its benefits could possibly out weigh the negative. A higher crop yield would have the possibility of ending hunger and famine.





 These unmanned ground systems have a high impact of effecting society in both a negative and positive impact. The negative impact could result in the loss of jobs to many who work in the manual labor industry of freight drivers or farm labors. The positive impact is the production yield and time efficiency that could come from the use of unmanned systems. Society must weigh these pros and cons when implementing unmanned systems into daily use. What that outcome could be is still a futuristic thought that has yet come to past.

Research Blog 5: Unmanned System Implementation Strategy

For this weeks blog it has been tasked to "addresses a basic strategy to ensure successful implementation of an unmanned system within known limitations." When implementing an unmanned aerial system into the the government or private sector certain issues must be discussed and resolved in order to ensure success. This blog will touch base on a few of these issues in the government and federal sector of unmanned aerial systems. Those issues being: Privacy, Ethics, Safety, and lost link/loss of system control.

Privacy is a main concern when dealing with unmanned aerial systems. In many cases, especially in the United States, the use of drone surveillance by federal or government entities, such as police stations or military installations on private citizens is seen as "Big Brother" keeping an eye on the populous and is said to violate the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution (Bill of Rights) guarantees that “(t)he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects of unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” which many have taken the use of UASs for surveillance to be a violation of this amendment. To combat against this the Department of Transportation created a UAS Privacy Policy in an attempt to "to ensuring that any use of UAS in support of Departmental programs balances programmatic requirements with the need to respect personal privacy and protect individual civil rights and civil liberties...prior to deployment of new UAS technology and at least every 3 years, examine their existing UAS policies and procedures relating to the collection, use, retention, and dissemination of information obtained by UAS, to ensure that privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties are protected"(“UAS privacy policy,” 2016). These privacy need to be taken into affect to not only protect the populous' privacy but also their safety.

Safety concerns must be taken into concern not only with the UAS itself but with the general population when flying UASs close to populated areas. Certain incidents have occurred where safety concerns were called into question regarding UASs. "In 2007, the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) reported that pilot error was the cause of an April 2006 Predator B crash, as the team piloting the UAV accidentally turned the engine off."(Finn & Wright, 2012). This incident though did not have any human causalities or injury it did have the potential and the potential of safety concerns have to be looked at and prevented.

In the ethical consideration of UASs this aspect deals mostly with military grade UAVs. It is the thought that unmanned systems since they are "unmanned" will indiscriminately eliminate targets.
In relation to civil applications, Hayes, of Big Brother Watch, states that “drones and other robotic tools will add to the risks of a Playstation mentality^.where bodies are objectified into “things to track, monitor, apprehend, and kill" (Finn & Wright, 2012) This is a high possibility that must be taken into consideration. The distinction of what is an active or "hostile" target is a rigor that RPA pilots must continually analyze and correspond with surveillance and intelligence gathering officials before elimination of the target is done. Unmanned systems are never truly "unmanned" a human aspect is usually at the helm of the controls.


References:

Finn, R. L., & Wright, D. (2012). Unmanned aircraft systems: Surveillance, ethics and privacy in civil applications. Computer Law & Security Review, 28(2), 184–194. doi:10.1016/j.clsr.2012.01.005

UAS privacy policy. (2016, June 7). Retrieved December 12, 2016, from https://www.transportation.gov/individuals/privacy/uas-privacy-policy