Help Find Steve Fossett

An anonymous reader invites us to join in the hunt for the missing Steve Fossett using Amazon's Mechanical Turk. DigitalGlobe, one of Google's imaging partners, has acquired new high-resolution satellite imagery of the area where Fossett disappeared on Monday. The public can now go through this imagery and quickly flag any images that might contain Fossett's plane. Flagged images will receive further review by search and rescue experts.

what's he wearing?

What's he wearing red and white stripes? Seriously though, this is a pretty cool tool even if it is a bit ridiculous considering all the missing persons there are out there who get no attention...

Not all missing persons can be seen from space

To be fair, most missing persons are hiding in bus terminals and seedy motels. Even if it sadly takes someone of celebrity, even someone whose personal hobby is to put themselves into ridiculous danger, to develop a new form of distributed wetware computing, it's still for the better.

Maybe if someone had thought of this earlier, that unlucky family in Oregon wouldn't have been stranded in their car for a week. Or maybe, now there's a new option for the next time that does happen.

Forget SETI-at-Home. I'd much rather play "FindTheLostPeople-at-Home".

Re:Not all missing persons can be seen from space

For a distributed human image recognition project I think classify-galaxies-at-home [galaxyzoo.org] is more rewarding than "find-Fossett's-corpse" (A bit harsh perhaps, but let's not beat around the bush). At least classifying galaxies you get to see some beautiful galaxies that no-one may ever have seen before, and your time will help scientists look for patterns in galaxy types and test theories about galaxy formation.

Like who?

it is a bit ridiculous considering all the missing persons there are out there who get no attention...

Did you just make this up because it makes you seem like a Sensitive and Thoughtful Person? Or can you actually name someone who went missing in the wilderness and "got no attention"?

FYI, rangers and such take their jobs very seriously. So far as I know, everyone reported missing in the wilderness gets a full spare-no-expense search and rescue effort. They look for "nobodies" just as hard as they're looking for Fossett, and the dedicated folks who do those tough jobs would take great offense at your ignorant suggestion otherwise.

Re:Like who?

They found SIX [google.com] separate undocumented plane crash sites while searching for Fosset... why is it they can find these plane crashes while searching for Fosset, but couldn't find any of those before hand?

It's also quite illogical to ask "who" didn't get attention -- if they got attention, then we'd know who they were.

Re:Like who?

You can't look for people if you don't even know they're missing. If they were flying below the radar (not hard to do in the mountains), filed no flight plans, and left behind no one who cared about them enough to notice they're missing, then how exactly were the rescue agencies supposed to find them?

Further, if they were doing all those things, what're the odds the undocumented wreckage contains remains of undocumented would-be workers or non-medicinal pharmaceuticals?

Re:Like who?

However it is interesting that (AFAIK) no one has tried this sort of public search using satellite images before.

The search for Jim Gray [slashdot.org] is a precursor to this. They used a U2 plane instead of satellite images. The Amazon Turk was also used.

Re:what's he wearing?

Yo mammas so fat when she got lost and they found her on google earth.

I couldn't find Steve

but I found Waldo!

Does this really improve the odds of finding him?

I suppose there are already trained people looking at the images. From the Police, Fire-Department, or whatever organization handles these kinds of emergencies in Nevada. I stress the word trained because the satellite data definetely needs experienced eyes to look out for the right stuff.

The article starts by explaining what to look for on these images. This is good, but to substitute for experience in looking at such images.

Re:Does this really improve the odds of finding hi

Well, then, any novices who join in here may gain some experience!

Re:Does this really improve the odds of finding hi

One day we'll be telling our children, "When I was your age, we actually had people comparing satellite imagery to find lost people!"

Seriously, though, can't computers do this sort of thing more efficiently? I'm no expert on the state of image recognition

Re:Does this really improve the odds of finding hi

Seriously, though, can't computers do this sort of thing more efficiently?

Nope. The govt. has spent millions or billions on this problem over the years, but they still employ analysts to do it manually for the most part.

What, you thought there was no interesting CS research left to do?

Re:

I press the "End" key to scroll all the way down. Look at the image. Click Yes or No. Click Submit Hit. Three interactions per image.

Dan East

Re:Does this really improve the odds of finding hi

If amateurs can find new meteor craters [astroseti.org] with google earth, why not airplanes? How trained do you really have to be to spot an oddly shaped bright feature in otherwise mundane terrain?

Re:Does this really improve the odds of finding hi

It probably can't hurt, but you're right in that it can be difficult for even a trained observer to spot the wreckage of a small plane at that resolution - or even from 5,000 feet with your own eyeballs.

I spent a few years on the local search and rescue te

high-resolution satellite imagery

Cool, can i get some of my neighborhood? The stuff on google is a good 5 years old, if not older. The resolution is pretty poor too.

Nevada

The area of Nevada where he is missing is actually rugged and mountainous ( I have some proerties in those parts myself ). Look on Google earth if you don't believe me, the name 'Nevada' means ',mountains. Also area 51 is now where nearby. There's a lot of rugged and inaccessible terrain he could've gone down, unfortunatley, and 5 days is a long time without water, its dry and hot out this time of year. I'd say the situation doesn't look good at this point, but we can always hope for a miracle, best of luck to the SAR and CAP people.

Re:Nevada

the name 'Nevada' means ',mountains. No, I think you've got your states confused. The word 'nevada' means 'snow-covered.' The word 'montana' means 'mountain.'

Found a plane...

38 29' 03.51" N
119 24' 21.64" W

Re:Found a plane...

The scale make it a little bit small, but I think it is exactly the sort of thing that they are telling us to report to them. Contact the HIT requestor via Amazon perhaps?

Looks like a plane to me too.

Re:

Follow-up. I have contacted the person who put the satellite picture on Amazon and sent them AC's coordinates. No need for everyone to do it, I'm sure they're busy right now.

What do we do if we find a plane????

Ok, so what do we do if we find a plane just browsing in Google Earth? (way more efficient than refreshing the webpage).

38 7'34.00"N, 11929'4.81"W

Much more fuzzy than the AC plane, so this is probably nothing, but the size and shape is about right (a bit s

Mod Parent Up

I'd say that's a hit. The object matches the dimensions of a Super Decathlon, according to Google Earth.

Re:Found a plane...

Loosk like it may actually be flying. It may even be a search plane.

Re:Found a plane...

Doesn't seem to be an old wreck as it doesn't show up in older maps. I looked before I downloaded the maps in the article and there was nothing there. Also, measuring the plane with the ruler tool shows 22 feet, exactly the length of Fossett's plane.

Unfortunately, the lack of north-west facing shadows around the plane (see the trees) suggests that this is a plane in the air, not on the ground.

Re:Found a plane...

Say they're flying at 10,000 ft (~3 km) and the satellite is in LEO (~300 km). Then by similar triangles, the plane should appear to be 300/297 of the size (1% bigger).

This is wrong on so many levels...

Most of us aren't SAR experts, and wouldn't know a burn mark from a ridge shadow. The SARs that will be sifting through the public's mostly incorrect identification of accident artifacts would be better utilized in direct search efforts (either in the air or using imagery), rather than being distracted by what could best be considered a somewhat morbid game of "Where's Steve".

The time to test this type of technology out isn't during a live SAR mission. Leave the search and rescue to the experts, and please don't tie up their time with your well-meaning, but ultimately time-wasting, suppositions.

Re:

Most of us aren't SAR experts, and wouldn't know a burn mark from a ridge shadow. The SARs that will be sifting through the public's mostly incorrect identification of accident artifacts would be better utilized in direct search efforts

They don't re-send those images to other random users to filter out the results before passing them along to a pro?
'you sure?

Because, if they did that, then "x people think there's something here" might make a nice priority queue for those pros, rather th

Too bad UAV are illegal

These pictures are lousy - to really get useable images would require a fly-over.
Manned flyovers are expensive, slow, and often dangerous if a person is lost due to inclimate weather;
However Unmanned flyovers can be conducted in poor weather, at very low cost, and without pilot fatigue or airspace crowding concerns.

It is ironic that private pilots have been objecting to uav, and now their hero doesn't have the benefit of private UAV flights for search and rescue in his time of need.

Not to gloat, but this would be a fitting time for the private pilots associations to change course on elbowing out UAV's and giving another nascent industry to europe.

AIK

Great use of the technology, but...

This is a very good use of the technology. I hope this works if for no other reason than to bring closure to his family if he hasn't survived.

My problem is the way they've got the web page set up. Every time I submit a new "HIT", I have to scroll all the way down the page again to see the next image. It's great that they have a "primer" a the top, but I've done a couple hundred now... I don't need to keep seeing that over and over again. Just cut to the chase and show me the next picture to examine.

Also, looking at the Google Earth swath that this is covering, I can't help but think that he might be outside of that. Can anyone comment? Or do they know "if he's anywhere, he's in that area."?

-S

Turn off the "terrain"

I was about to post how distorted the image is, when on a hunch I decided to unclick the "terrain" box on GE. The image becomes a LOT clearer, but I still don't think it is nearly clear enough to identify something as small as a 22" plane.

Re:Turn off the "terrain"

That's what *she* said!

Had a chance to meet her ex, but never took her up on it.

Fast Turk Interaction

I keep hearing people whine about the Mechanical Turk interface. Each image only requires one mouse click and two keyboard presses (no mouse movement at all required). Here's how:

1 - When you manually accept the first hit, make sure you check "Automatically accept the next HIT".
2 - Press the END key to scroll all the way down to see the image.
3 - Click the mouse on Yes or No.
4 - Press the ENTER key to accept the HIT.
5 - Goto 2

I've found two images that are really good candidates for a crash. One was at 38.020248,-119.368515. It looks like a line of tree damage, with a bright object at the edge of the tree line.

Next, I keep hearing people saying that laypeople aren't useful for something like this. This is simply to flag interesting images so experts can spend their time looking only at the most likely candidates. Also, this is free for them. So they could use an algorithm something like this:
Show each image to at least 5 people.
Each time someone says "Yes" to a specific image, show it to two additional people, up to a max of 20 reviews.
Sort the images by descending Yes vote count and show them to the experts in that order.

Dan East

Jim Gray

The last time an effort like this was undertaken, it was for Jim Gray (Database researcher, Microsoft Fellow), who had disappeared sailing from San Francisco. I checked on that for a while, but never saw any more information.

Was anything ever found in the search for Jim Gray? No remnants of his boat, or other signs of what happened?

Quite ironic....

...as Steve Fossett originally set out to take this journey to find a flat and long enough place to do his world land-speed record. Now Google has high-resolution imagery of the whole place, which makes the whole undertaking a bit obsolete in retrospect ?

I think I found something...

38 3'24.02"N 11914'56.55"W It looks like a plane, it's about 20 ft in length and has a 23-24 ft wingspan. I don't know how to contact them but if anyone here can communicate with them, please do. Don't forget to credit me if it turns out to be his plane.

Question

I've seen on the news that they've checked out like 6 or 7 plane crash sites that turned out not to be Fossett. What that left me wondering was, are those sites where they just left wreckage because it was remote or are they previously unknown crashes where a plane went missing and was never found?

How often does that happen with light aircraft? Do they vanish entirely very often?

amazon work units increasing, area, false pos

When I started to help this morning there were 32,000 work units (called hits, images to be reviewed) available. They were disappearing at a rate of 5-10,000 per hour, meaning that all things being equal there were 50-100 people looking at them.

However over the past half hour the work units available have been *increasing*. Currently 12,000 and increasing. Clearly they are adding more to be done faster than we're doing them. So anyone who helped out at the beginning - don't assume the hits are "all done". There could be more at any time.

In my old version of IE I couldn't see the scale bars or the example image, looking at the same coords of a unique scene in google maps I estimated the image was 125m x 125m - which would be half meter resolution. Now I see they claim the images are actually 85x85m, which would be 1.08ft resolution.

Based on that and that I've done 400 units, that mean's I've searched one full square mile.

It also means the 32,000 units I saw when I started is only 10 miles x 10 miles, 100 square miles. I heard someone else say that they only have 500 square miles of imagery. Looking at Google Earth, assuming the new imagery is the kinda-rectangular patch that is all the same color/brightness - they have approx 1700 square miles. That means there is approximately 600,000 work units in total that need done. If everone does a square mile (shouldn't take more than an hour) then we need 1700 people helping.

But as someone else noted - they're really artificially limiting the search area, considering the range on his plane. Assuming he went certain places or crashed on his way back to the ranch. That doesn't bode well.

PS: It'd be way way more effective if they showed a "image before crash" so that people could self-discover their false positives, without forcing people to download google earth and figure it's before/after out, and/or be smart enough to copy/paste the coords into google-maps satellite view.

PPS: If they were really smart, they'd have a second private pool of the public's false positives being reviewed by amateurs or employees whom they know have much much smaller false positive rates, whom they know are comparing the two available before images (google maps and google earth) against the current images.

BTW: Here are images of the actual specific plane he was flying. http://www.airport-data.com/aircraft/N240R.html [airport-data.com] (Aviation buffs take pictures and index online everything that flies, apparently :) I'm guessing that although from the side it's mostly blue, that the top of the wings are white.

Re:I, for one...

This is better than "Where's Waldo?"!

walking into the light

True, it could be a publicity stunt. But if it isn't intentional, then he's dead. He had enough experience to know to have an ELT/EPRIB on his plane. If he didn't activate it when he went down, it's because he was too injured to flip a switch to turn it on. Id the wreck was bad enough to break his ELT/EPRIB, then he didn't stand a chance.://www.nctackle.com/acraq406mhzg1.html [slashdot.org] http://www.avionix.com/store/elt.html [avionix.com]

Re:Google Earth

into the "Fly To" box in the top left corner of Google Earth.

It sure is tempting to burn some karma now; could even mention the new flightsim in Google Earth...

Re:

Yes, Google Earth has updated images of the region. You can tell because they are obviously satellite photos and not overflight. Notice that everything is shot from straight up instead of the normal angle and also note the lack of color.

Read the article,

Re:Obligatory question in capitalist America

For helping a fellow human being? A warm fuzzy feeling inside. And, if you believe in it, karma/brownie points with your deity of choice.

For helping a millionaire in his hour of need? Who knows, maybe 15 minutes of fame, a few opportunities that you would otherwise not had and maybe a modest reward.

For most, doing the former is enough.

Re:Obligatory question in capitalist America

But can I get some /. karma if I find him?

Re:Obligatory question in capitalist America

I think the insinuation that such a technology and effort would ONLY be made available to a rich white man is jaded and wrong.

I am sure that this technology and effort would be made, also, for any pretty white girl. Especially if she's blond.

And unless you're a white millionaire or a pretty white blond girl, who cares if you're missing? I've watched Fox News enough to know that nobody except pretty white blond girls ever go missing *anyway*.

What I don't understand is . . . who does some rich wealthy adventurer not have some sort of backup plan or beacon or something? And besides that, what has he ever done for society other than be rich? Traveling around the globe in a hot air balloon hardly benefits mankind. *shrug*

I'm not saying he shouldn't be found or that I wish any ill will on him. I just don't see what he's done to warrant such a high concern on an international level beyond any other missing person... except at least someone who was kidnapped is less responsible for their situation than some adventurer who puts himself in harms way for hobby.

Re:Obligatory question in capitalist America

I have just completed my 729th image looking for Steve Fossett on the Mechanical Turk. I guess thats a lot more than I originally intended to do, but my reasons for keeping going are:-

• If Steve isn't found immediately, there probably won't be much point in looking anymore. We have to help today.
• I admire his approach to life. We just passed Steve Irwin's anniversary here in Oz and this sort of guy is all too rare.
• This isn't a lottery - you help almost as much by your work in eliminating the useless images as you do by escalating the significant ones so you can always feel a sense of satisfaction even when you don't see a plane.
• I've got nothing else better to do with a lazy Sunday.

In the 729 views, I've reported one image that contained a feature that looked like a rock formation impersonating an aircraft. The instructions tell us to be conservative so I reported the hit.

Plenty more to go around folks! How often are you given the chance to personally save the life of a billionare? Sounds worthwhile even in capitalist America to me.

-F

Re:Amazon's incompetence

thanks for impeding the search for this guy amazon

So they have an infrastructure in place that can easily organize & manage a massive search like this and you want to bitch because you had to "like... sign in" and occasionally fill out a CAPTCHA? Jeez, dude. A man's life is likely at stake here and a company stepped up to try and help the cause and you're complaining because they didn't implement the solution exactly as you would've liked. Why don't you spend more time checking out HITs and less time posting stupid shit on /. if you care so much about the process being impeded?

I sorted 100 images while you posted your advice

(no comment)

Oh yeah, totally.

We're all screwed unless the government can track small aircraft flying over entirely unpopulated land in the middle of nowhere near absolutely no valuable targets. So remote, in fact, that no one has noticed a plane go down in the last week.

You're right