FCC moves to ban Lidar-equipped foreign drones from US

ff-serif about 3 hours ago 34 commentsRead Article on tomshardware.com

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Discussion (34 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

ethin•6 minutes ago

Aaaaand this "ban" will be just as incompetently executed as the ban that happened like, what, a couple weeks ago about drones? Literally all the manufacturers did was create some shell companies, change the branding a bit, and boom. So much for banning things, amiright? Not to mention the shear amount of customer confusion because now they have to figure out what differentiates all these new brands nobody has ever heard of.

amanaplanacanal•24 minutes ago

American consumers are stuck with crappier and much more expensive tech. Thanks Mr President! I'm sure that's what your voters were asking for!

ChrisArchitect•about 1 hour ago

National Security Determination Threat Posed by Foreign-Produced Robotic Devices [pdf]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49095714

tamimio•about 2 hours ago

How’s a Lidar is a national risk?! (It’s easy to build a lidar based drones in a weekend project) Also, knowing plenty of US based drone manufacturers, most of their stuff are dependent on Chinese parts, the radio communication is on top of that list. If I were DJI, I would make Lidar and similar components modular, so they can still sell these drones while consumers can buy these modules later or DIY it, like literally most of the drones, which will be great for other consumers in the world for the easy repairability.

onetimeusename•about 1 hour ago

I don't think it's LiDAR itself that is the risk. The FCC note read more like the cause is trade and supply-chain protectionism. (https://www.fcc.gov/sites/default/files/robots-nsd.pdf)

ranger_danger•about 1 hour ago

> How’s a Lidar is a national risk?!

The anti-flock community believes it's because they can destroy image sensors from a distance. And banning the foreign ones means they can order domestic-made drones to have firmware that prevents them from operating in certain ways or in certain (government) areas, among other things.

The finance community thinks they just don't want competition that might rival or sell better than domestic ones, similar to the ban on Chinese EVs.

The privacy community thinks they only want surveillance to be possible from within, likening it to previous bans on DJI drones and Chinese routers. And the administration is currently working on trying to ban other kinds of networking gear as well as cellular modems from China (which is basically every phone in the country).

Would love to hear other theories. Perspectives are fun.

05•about 1 hour ago

> And banning the foreign ones means they can order domestic-made drones to have firmware that prevents them from operating in certain (government) areas, among other things.

Yeah because DJI drones are well known for their easy to hack firmware and lacking support for no fly zones..right? And they would openly flaunt any US law making any drones sold or flown the US to obey the NFZs? But wait, that's exactly what DJI drones used to do even without a law on the books, before FCC banned them.

ranger_danger•about 1 hour ago

NFZ was just one example, there's no limit to what they could force other countries' software to do in their domestic versions. That was really the point I was trying to make.

greenavocado•about 1 hour ago

Steel manning this argument:

  Electronic warfare resistant loitering munitions. They would transmit sparse point clouds to the enemy for training.

Not saying I support it.

anigbrowl•about 1 hour ago

How is this worse than 4k video, in this age of analytical abundance? The steel content of this argument is pretty low; it's essentially 'technology operates normally = national security risk.'

Why not ban pencils? You can draw maps or schematics of secret things, plus they can be used to stab people!

0x20cowboy•20 minutes ago

https://m.youtube.com/shorts/U1MigIJXJx8

tamimio•about 1 hour ago

> Electronic warfare resistant loitering munitions

Most fpv drones don’t even have GNSS, they fly on acro mode or manual one, so that won’t prevent a “loitering munition”. Now for gnss denied autonomous navigation, Lidar isn’t the corner stone part, for indoor ones other sensors do well if not better like stereo cams, outdoor, you don’t need Lidar that much, but also you can use image based navigation, where it compares prestored images to land marks to navigate accurately. That being said, it’s not like Lidars are completely banned, you can buy one, 2d or 3d lidar, and equip it on your drone that you built, you don’t need dji to have it ready for you, so that ban won’t really mitigate any risk assuming there is one.

> They would transmit sparse point clouds to the enemy for training

Restricted facilities already restrict any kind of drone, other locations you can access these info without the need to transmit any point clouds data anyway.

cr125rider•about 2 hours ago

Another move to remove competition for Don Jr.?

option•about 1 hour ago

That seems to be the whole point of USA these days

ACCount37•about 1 hour ago

That, or to avoid surrendering yet another technology relevant to the future to China. As if them manufacturing the bulk of world's solar panels, wind turbines and heading for EVs isn't bad enough.

05•about 1 hour ago

US companies don't even sell consumer drones, so are they going to stay competitive by forcing consumers to buy $4000 enterprise models for their kids to play with?

ACCount37•about 1 hour ago

Hobbyist drones also don't ship with lidar in stock.

The concern isn't China dominating the area of $20 toys. The concern is platforms relevant to industry and military.

Whether that, in turn, can be disentangled from "the area of $20 toys" in case of drones is unclear to me.

dgellow•about 1 hour ago

China has been leading in drones since a very long time. It’s not something they took from the US

t-writescode•about 1 hour ago

If we cared enough to be effective, we would be subsidizing / encouraging local manufacture of all of those at a competitive, non-luxury price.

dgellow•42 minutes ago

That would need to start with building the manufacturing infrastructure. But that requires to work on long term goals, something the west hasn’t been doing that well over the last 30+ years

PunchyHamster•about 1 hour ago

That isn't stopping them from developing LIDAR in any way

Moreover they also have 2 market leaders in that techs

anigbrowl•about 1 hour ago

I mean, the rest of the world still exists and is generally happy to buy reasonably priced Chinese tech. American isolationists get rather carried away by geography to the point of assuming the rest of world is in a state of cinematic collapse with a few super enemies stalking the ruins. Trump's comments the other day suggesting he's capable of destroying the Swiss economy overnight demonstrate a sort of socioeconomic myopia predicated on the idea that the US is the only consumer market that matters.

georgemcbay•19 minutes ago

Stopping US import of any of these technologies doesn't suddenly make them disappear. They still exist. You can't "ignore them and they'll go away", this is real life.

And as an American citizen I am always hearing how bad it is for China to have a leg up on us in X, Y or Z, and yet our government is the one that is regularly saber rattling (and starting wars over!) the shifting economic realities of the US clearly being an empire in decline.

These days we also regularly saber rattle our own "allies" for fuck's sake.

Long past time to ask yourself if maybe we're the baddies.

CSMastermind•about 1 hour ago

We're quickly reaching the point where Lidar isn't needed, pure vision workflows are getting much better.

s0ss•about 1 hour ago

No, it very much depends on the application, what you're trying to do. Different tools for different jobs. Don't conflate.

PunchyHamster•about 1 hour ago

Well, Elon thought that too and we still haven't seen any robotaxi

blitzar•44 minutes ago

Hearing its definitely going to happen by the end of the year

ethin•2 minutes ago

I heard he'd have it done by the end of the month

dgellow•41 minutes ago

Maybe when he’s back from his visit on Mars?

ranger_danger•36 minutes ago

Since last month they are operational in multiple states now.

https://preview.redd.it/475jdxno8xfh1.jpg?width=2252&format=...

stefan_•26 minutes ago

LiDAR in drones is not necessarily the "stereo vision" application you are thinking of, it can also be something as simple as a LiDAR altimeter.

well_ackshually•about 1 hour ago

yeah, who could ever need accurate and immediate depth perception, having to carry a 4090 in my roomba to badly reconstruct it from 4 pictures so it can stop bumping into walls is like the future man