Science on Screen: Ummaned Aircraft Systems (DRONES)

Join Professor of Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley J Karl Hedrick for a revealing and timely exploration of the science of unmanned aircraft systems, followed by Sundance award-winning sci-fi thriller Sleep Dealer.

Professor J Karl Hedrick will describe and discuss how remotely piloted unmanned aircraft systems (drones) work and share recent research focused on developing autonomous ones as well as what FAA is doing to integrate drones in the national air space.

The film: Sleep Dealer

Intelligent, humane, and intensely imaginative, Alex Rivera's feature debut is set in the near future, where sealed borders divide the world but a digital network ties people together. When his family is victim of a misguided drone attack, Memo, ayoung Mexican from Oaxaca, travels to Tijuana to join a new kind of migrant work force – one where the poor plug their nervous systems into a global electronic grid and control worker-robots in America from virtual sweatshops in their home countries.

In Tijuana, Memo becomes entwined with a young journalist who uploads her memories and sells them online, and a military contractor who operates drones around the world from his base in California.

Sleep Dealer won awards at Sundance and the Berlin Film Festival, was screened at New Directors/New Films at MoMA and Lincoln Center, and had an international theatrical release.