Following on from my “previous post”:http://thinkingmachine.blogsome.com/2006/01/31/ghosts-in-the-machine the US Military is research techology to automate the creation of “3d maps of urban battlefields”:http://www.newscientist.com/channel/info-tech/mg18624985.800.

. IMAGINE if the first soldiers to enter an enemy city could map it street by street, recording every window and doorway of the urban battlefield in an accurate 3D model that could instantly be relayed to their comrades at base.

The concept is similar to building a virtual reality model, but the process is very different. To produce a VR model, a programmer manually combines distance measurements and 2D pictures to make a 3D model. The new technique, dubbed “virtualised reality” by creator Avideh Zakhor, is automated and much faster. Virtualised reality scans the urban landscape using lasers and digital cameras mounted on a truck or plane. A laser measures distances to objects such as lamp posts and building facades, while the digital camera takes 2D photos. Another laser calculates the movement of the truck and checks its position against data collected from the aerial laser aboard the plane.

These measurements and pictures are fed into a computer that combines them to create a photo-realistic virtual 3D model of the area

This is the really cool part:

bq. The process of creating models could be speeded up even further by developments in unmanned aerial vehicles. The US navy is developing cheap (around $2000) robotic aircraft that can operate in “swarms” to perform reconnaissance of a wide area at speed. The aircraft use cooperative software that allows the swarm to cope with some of its members being shot down.

Woah! Can you say “skynet”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skynet!