Sramana Majumdar

"Violence, Identity and Self-determination: Narratives of conflict from the Kashmir Valley" 4:15 PM, Monday 18 Nov Room 239, BYC Bryn Mawr College

Exposure Index

Tired of paper and pencil questionnaires about integration and intergroup contact? Try the new and improved EXPOSURE INDEX (click tab above on this page).

The Ethics of Saving Lives With Autonomous Cars Are Far Murkier Than You Think

A discussion of autonomous cars from the point of view of a philosopher.

U.S. Navy Gets in on Drone Action With First Real Aircraft Carrier Landing

Previous landing tests occurred on land-based mock-ups of a carrier runway and wire. Though several attempts were aborted, the X-47B has proven that autonomous carrier landings are possible.

Pilotless drones to fly over England looking for missing walkers

Search and rescue is a perfect field for UAVs, and, according to polls, one of the least controversial. However, this article starts out with the sentence “Pilotless drones usually used in war will be spying on the English countryside to find missing walkers”. This approach reflects and reinforces the extent to which public opinion views […]

New robot helping keep Puget Sound seafood safe to eat

If nothing else, this proves just how flexible unmanned systems are – and just how widespread they might become.

Daddy, What Was a Truck Driver?

This article starts with Caterpillar’s work on autonomous mining trucks, and considers the future of driving jobs as the technology becomes more reliable and less expensive.

Colbert Report: Domino’s Pizza Drone

The subject is barely introduced before missile-carrying military drones are referenced, again showing the extent to which the Air Force has defined UAVs in popular culture.

Drones a safety and privacy headache

In this article from Australia, safety and privacy concerns figure largely. Private, commercial, and government operators are all noted, though the dangers of “the issue of children flying model drone aircraft” is probably far less than the more capable government and commercial types.

Smartphones and drones: Nokia Lumia 1020 to get airborne

While still expensive ($7000+), the use of a smartphone as the computational core of this UAV brings drones far closer to the general public and low-budget hobbyists.

DARPA Hydra, here comes the mothership designed to deploy drones

The goal of the project is an unmanned submarine capable of deploying smaller unmanned underwater and/or aerial vehicles. Unlike the Air Force, the Navy appears less culturally against unmanned vehicle, having tested long range autonomous vehicles for years, quietly implementing them for mapping and surveillance. This perhaps comes from decades of autonomous torpedo development. Deployable […]

Air Force aims to land more top guns amid pilot shortage

Part of the shortage is from expectation of eventually being replaced by drones – which paradoxically leads to a greater need for pilot-replacements.