Troglodyte: Driverless vehicles 2

Effectively they attempt to patent the exact thing every good driver does.”

The purpose of Project Troglodyte is to hunt for bad patents and to show what went wrong. For more information, see the  web page.

DIAGNOSIS AND REPAIR FOR AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES


This patent is analyzed as part of a series of Google driverless car patents and applications. It is an emerging technology area which, I feel, will have a significant impact in 7-20 year time frame, perhaps even earlier. Existing Intellectual Property will make a difference on how the field develops.



Figure 1.


TIER 1: SUMMARY

A system where sensor information is used to determine wear or damage to parts of the vehicle, this information is then combined with information from environmental sensors and with map data to alter behaviour of the vehicle. For example: if the brakes are worn the system would use smaller deceleration than when the brakes are new. This is done to extend the life of the brakes, presumably until they can be overhauled. While the claims don’t seem to include it, the description also introduces a possibility for the vehicle to automatically seek a repair facility.

If this application is granted as is, it would likely cover some fundamental aspects of automated vehicles. It would cover a situation where external sensors indicate water on the road and the vehicle is able to sense significant tire wear and then decelerates to avoid hydroplaning. The current application doesn’t even attempt to explain how any of this is done; it is a description of a system that decides between different actions based on sensor and other inputs. Effectively they attempt to patent the exact thing every good driver does.

It should be noted that while the claims give an impression that this is about cars, it can be considered to cover other types of vehicles such as airplanes. In fact in the description  trucks, motorcycles, busses, boats, airplanes, helicopters, lawnmowers, recreational vehicles, amusement park vehicles, trams, golf carts, trains and trolleys are mentioned as examples of vehicles.

Looking at the news, it seems driverless car development is all about sensor fusion. Adequate sensor technologies are available, but putting together a system that makes sense of all the information takes a lot of work. Protecting solutions to problems that are encountered during development is standard practice. If granted this would in a fairly broad manner give Google a handle over an important optimization aspect of driverless vehicles.

TIER 2: AVOIDING LICENSING

Using a FEM model incorporating current sensor information to predict the response of the vehicle to current conditions could be used to change the behaviour without resorting to selecting from a list of possible actions. It is difficult to say if this differs enough from the language of the claims to be outside the scope of this application, but it could be useful in any case.

The obvious bypass route is to not use information about damage or wear to components internal to the vehicle. This however could restrict how aggressively the computer could use the vehicle as it would in some cases need to make a worst case assumption about the state of vehicle systems.

TIER 3: TECHNICAL ANALYSIS

The inventive step seems to be missing so discussion of novelty is a bit academic, but looking at novelty of the different parts can show that their combination is fairly obvious. Using sensors to monitor the internal wear and damage is a known technology. By way of example: a Yamaha two stroke outboard motor I used at least a decade ago had an internal oil tank. In case the motor was out of oil it reduced the available power to avoid engine damage. I remember this as it happened to me while I was crossing a shipping lane. It was quite exciting for a while, as there was a largish ferry approaching a couple of kilometers away and I judged that if I failed in filling the tank I might not have enough time to get clear. As another example: automobile engine management systems may change to a different throttle response and ignition timing in case they lose some sensors feeding information regarding the state of the engine.

It is also common to have an indicator in the car that warns when the outside temperature is close to freezing. Several current models also offer systems that read speed limit signs with a camera and give this information to the driver. Information about automated speed traps can be downloaded to navigation devices.

Fusing all this information provided by these prior technologies is clearly necessary in an autonomous vehicle. It might be an invention if a novel way of doing this was shown, but is not enough to tell that there is a problem in need of a solution. To go back to my claim that this is what drivers do all the time; it might be an invention to show how to do, with a computer, what happens inside the head of the driver. This is because the prior knowledge on that is pretty much missing.

The description and figures are easy to follow, apart of some patentese which needs a couple of passes before being understood. Not much new is offered so the usefulness of the description to society is low. There doesn’t appear to be a step change from prior technology or knowledge so the invention is missing.

The claims are pretty straight forward and they clearly are derived from the description. Some elements seem to be missing though, like the idea where the vehicle checks in to a maintenance facility when it detects something in need of fixing. But this is likely well covered in sci-fi so it would not be new.

Troglodyte: Driverless vehicles 1

“This is solid engineering but I didn’t get the “hey this is clever” reaction which is a sort of indicator for inventiveness.”

The purpose of Project Troglodyte is to hunt for bad patents and to show what went wrong. For more information, see the  web page.

 

TRAFFIC SIGNAL MAPPING AND DETECTION

I have been interested in driverless vehicles for years and I like to read patents, so why not combine the two and share my thoughts. This is a short analysis of a Google US patent application, you can find the original here.



Figure 1.

 

TIER 1: SUMMARY

Contents in one sentence: mapping of traffic lights to enable real time status detection of those lights by vehicles. The description is not limited to automated vehicles, rather what is described is a general system of collecting location and orientation information of traffic lights and use of the results in the form of a map to enable detection of the state of said lights at a later time. When reading the patent I got the feeling that this is solid engineering but I didn’t get the “hey this is clever” reaction which is a sort of indicator for inventiveness.

The claims are not limited to a large database that all the vehicles would use to get the traffic light location information, it would also cover saving the same information in the cars own systems. I.e. it would not be possible for your car to store information of where the lights are on the routes you often drive, that is unless it had a licence from google to use.

This application seems to be intended to create difficulties for anyone who wishes to create a map of traffic lights for the purpose of guiding automated vehicles. It could give Google an advantage as creating and especially maintaining such a map by other means could pose some difficulties. Secondly there is a possibility that if it is granted in its current form Google might be able to prevent others from using information of traffic light location to help real time detection of the light state. As part of a portfolio of automated driving patents it could have some value, although there are other methods of getting the same information to car systems. The nice thing about the mapping idea is that it requires very little liaison with authorities maintaining the traffic system.

If the world is going to move to fully automated vehicles traffic lights are probably not needed in the sense they are currently used. Thus this patent would only be useful during a transition period, but the transition could easily be longer than the duration of the protection a patent offers

It is a bit scary that the description gives information on known triangulation and image recognition technologies as this might open a lot of trolling opportunities when the claims are widely interpreted.

TIER 2: AVOIDING LICENSING

An alternate to the map described in this document could be to determine when the light changes occur and from several of these time stamps create a state machine with transitions at known times. The timing information could then be distributed from the cloud to vehicles on their way to the same intersection. Knowing which light should be active would make it a bit faster to find the fixtures from larger images that result from not knowing the location of the traffic light. This would not need a map of locations of the traffic lights, it would only be a map of traffic light state machines with much more lax accuracy requirements . Vehicles could also take advantage of this information to optimize speed, thus reducing maximum accelerations and likely speed and therefore also lowering the likelihood of accidents or at least make the results less severe.

In the discussion of background it is mentioned that efforts have been made to develop systems that use radio transmission of traffic light state but the infrastructure investment is seen as an obstacle. Why not use existing radio infra to transmit the information? A scheme where the traffic light state is available on the net and read through a cellular data connection would need less tampering with the infrastructure. This of course only works in places where the traffic lights are centrally controlled.

The obvious bypassing technique is to not have a map of traffic lights and scan for them continually in the same general direction where drivers look for them. The cost of this surely will become lower as more and more computational power becomes available. One way of avoiding the use of a map could be to ask the vehicles in front of you: where did they find the light. Vehicle to vehicle communications is likely going to be ubiquitous before driverless cars, so there is a good chance that at some point only software development is required to implement exchange of the information. Getting the advantage of making the map in good weather and lighting conditions is more difficult to achieve with other methods.

TIER 3: TECHNICAL ANALYSIS

The description offers a fair explanation of the intended system though most of the details must be known technology. Triangulation and related methods are a widely used technology as is identification of objects with roughly known characteristics from images. Saving the location and characteristics of the identified objects in a database that can be called a map is likewise a well known approach for representing data in an accessible format.

At one point there is talk about triangulation and at the same time about using a sphere to determine which labels (i.e. location of traffic light in an image) will be associated with each other. Later it is mentioned that this determination may be part of an analysis of an image sequence, using a template to follow the traffic light in the consecutive images. At some point a first location determination needs to be done to get a center for the uncertainty sphere. A circular logic seems to be in use.

Knowing the location of the traffic lights before detection will likely lower the false interpretation rate especially if the conditions at the time of detection are difficult: for example there is fog, difficult lighting conditions for the cameras or heavy rain. It will also lower the computational intensity and thus lower the cost. This may be a significant advantage.

Several different types of traffic lights are in use around the world but the description is very light on how these could be identified. This is especially a problem in the map creation phase as it is crucial to make correct interpretations. If successful this effort would make the map more valuable as the vehicle would only need to identify the traffic light fixture and could use the map to identify positions of different types of lights (arrows etc.)

Value of the description is lowered by some pretty standard patent speak, for example why draw a flowchart and then say the boxes can be in any order? Is it because the examiners like flow charts and not bullet point lists? In the current form it reduces the value of the flow chart to zero, all of the text it contains is already in the description.

While creating a system that does the mapping is certainly not a trivial undertaking I find it difficult to see what is the inventive step. The mix of patent speak and technical writing in the description could effectively hide it but I would argue that the description is pretty much what most skilled in the art would try after they realise that real time identification takes too much processing power and results in too many errors.

Generally the claims seem to refer to the text in the description part and to the images.

The claims curiously omit other than color based identification of the lights (for example 20), embedded image, shape, frequency etc. could also be used for identification. With LED traffic lights it might even be possible to do a software upgrade to make them blink fast enough to show this in a row read camera sensor. Further, the color identification scheme is lacking in detail. Color is mentioned but not intensity, if the position of each intended signal is known, then it is possible to identify the state from just the relative intensity of the three indicators. Further, depending on the color of the surrounding light being reflected from the traffic light and the color of the light emitted from the traffic light there might not be a large difference in color between the on and off states anyway.

 

Launching Project Troglodyte

We are getting tired of all the whining we have done about patent trolls, and have decided to do something about it.

We are calling our effort Project Troglodyte (we chose the name because we like it). The purpose of Project Troglodyte is to hunt for bad patents and to show what went wrong. See the web page. We’ve done three sample analyses already (CleanTech 1Driverless vehicles 2Driverless vehicles1).

A key focus (though not the only one) are patents that would be easy for a patent troll to abuse. Sometimes a patent that initially looks bad turns out to be harmless on closer analysis; we will also include such cases.

We are not ideologically opposed to some kind of patent system as such, although we see serious flaws in the current system. What we are against are entities who abuse those flaws and provide no added value to society.  We don’t really care who owns any given patent or what they might be doing with it right now; we are simply interested in the potential for misuse, should the patent fall into the wrong hands.

We are partly inspired by the Patent Busting Project of the  Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). That project identifies patents which are being misused in courts, and tries to invalidate those patents (for example by finding prior art).  The EFF has very strong views against most patents, particularly software patents (see Patent Fail: In Defence of Innovation). We don’t necessarily agree with everything there.

However, we agree with this part: “The US Patent Office, overwhelmed and underfunded, issues questionable patents every day. “Patent trolls” buy too many of these patents and then misuse the patent system to shake down companies big and small.”  We’ve made some pretty strong statements of our own on this (see Trolling on the human rights; SMOS: The kiss of death of IPR; SMOS: Another view).

We want to take the EFF’s idea one step further: we scan for patents that have not YET caused problems, but have potential to do so in the future. We have chosen a few basic criteria:
1. Technologies that will be crucial in the near future.
2. Technologies that are potentially vulnerable to single patents.
3. Technologies that we understand at least somewhat.
4. Sometimes technologies we are just interested in.

We are doing this because we feel strongly about the issue of patent misuse, and want to see innovation that enables a better future. Between us we have quite a lot of experience in creating inventions, protecting them and analyzing patents. We feel that this project is a way to put that experience to good use. (For more details, see the About Us page). We are open to all and any suggestions on how to make this project more effective.

We have started off the project with three patent analyses, release simultaneously:

CleanTech 1. Transmitting pollution information over an integrated wireless network. “This is really no different from saying ‘If my invention sees a problem, it solves it'”.

Driverless vehicles 2. Diagnosis and repair for autonomous vehicles. “Effectively they attempt to patent the exact thing every good driver does.”

Driverless vehicles1. Traffic signal mapping and detection. “This is solid engineering but I didn’t get the “hey this is clever” reaction which is a sort of indicator for inventiveness.”


Trolling on the human rights

If I were a patent troll, which universal human right would I start abusing next?

Patents and humanitarian activity (and how patents can kill humanitarian activity) have been covered on this blog before (see the SMOS project). I am in a slightly cynical mood, so I will now pretend to be a strategist for a patent troll (a “non-practicing entity”). How could I best abuse the world?

Note: I am NOT talking about the way big companies (like, say, Monsanto) are perhaps strong-arming the patent system. Compared to me, Monsanto are the good guys. They at least have at some point put some money into some R&D, and produce something. All I plan to do is to exploit quirks in the patent system.

I would want my target industries to have three key criteria:

  1. They have little or no experience with IPR, and none with trolls. The best attack is when the target has no idea what hit him.
  2. They produce things which every person needs to have. Ideally, things that are considered human rights. That way, the targets have no real option except to accede to my demands (or else break IP law).
  3. (Optional): Some type of vendor lock-in. This means that the customer is tied to one specific vendor for all his needs. Many people realize that the vendor can then abuse the customer at will. Most people do not realize that a troll can then abuse both the vendor and the customer at will.

An nice target list is provided by the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, especially Articles 25-26.  There are many potential attacks, but here I will focus only on a few novel ideas.

Article 25.

  1. Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
  2. Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Food / clean water

This is where I would strike, first and foremost, no hesitation.  Water-purification technologies are the choicest target because they fulfill all key criteria (they are essential, people don’t expect attacks, and there are lock-ins). Some target markets (for example oil-rich desert countries) are rich enough to provide considerable blackmail money.

Methods to create potable drinking water would be my number one focus. It is a high-tech activity, with serious companies doing serious R&D work. An overly broad patent (either created now, or bought from a suitable player, or an fire sale after a bankruptcy) could be a major block.

I would target companies close to a breakthrough, and file/buy a huge number patents around the same area. Here’s a secret: It doesn’t really matter whether or not the patents are truly valid. All one needs to do is to strike at a strategic moment, and announce that one has a hundred patents which company X is infringing. This is a typical troll strategy.

The strategic moment: the instant a major water-cleaning plant has started providing water to a large city (Dubai, Nairobi, Mumbai, Dhaka). Even a brief court injunction on the operation of a key water plant could be problematic to a whole city. The blackmail potential is very high.

(Normally, one would expect a reasonable government to act like India in the medicine case discussed below, and simply ignore the blackmail and the the injunction. However, consider an extremely poor and corrupt country with the leading elite fully tied to foreign interests… it might not do the sane thing).

Water distribution would be even more fruitful, since it is in practice impossible to set up a competing water and sewage network overnight. There is a definite vendor lock-in in that business. However, the technology is so simple that there is little IPR to abuse.

Medical care

Medical care would be a lucrative area for attack, but… filing spurious patents is difficult in this area. The major drug manufacturers are well protected by patent thickets.  There is also an active backlash against medical patents, which means that criterion 1 is no longer satisfied. Everyone is expecting attacks. For example, India is banning branded drugs. Governments and NGOS’s are already on their toes, unlike the water case. I would pass on this.

Communications

I would put communications in this category as well. I am not the only one; the ITU (the telecommunications branch of the United Nations) is waking up to the patent wars in the telecoms industry, and their effect on innovation (see for example here). This war was also addressed in our SMOS project.

The ITU initiative is largely an attack on patent trolls. A cynic might expect that since the big companies have deep pockets to affect the process, and governments have their own telecom industries to protect, the end result will be an even deeper monopoly on development by a few megacompanies, with no benefit for poor countries. Time will show.

In any case, while trolling the telecoms industry is currently all the rage, the competition is getting harsh, there is little chance for a surprise attack, and a serious backlash is likely. I would look elsewhere.

Motherhood and childhood

Childhood diarrhea is one of the worst killers in the world, and could largely be avoided by providing clean water and saline solution. A patent on a particular type of saline solution could provide interesting leverage to an utterly sociopathic troll. However, in practice it is relatively easy for medical professionals to work around the IPR by substituting slightly different components. Thus, while intriguing, the work-arounds make trolling difficult.

Article 26.

  1.  Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
  2. Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
  3.  Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

(Distance) education

Low-cost distance learning technologies are interesting, especially as they provide a very low-cost alternative in extremely poor countries. The best course of attack would be cases where a given company has achieved an effective lock-in on the overall technology and has created a walled garden.

A walled garden means that one company controls all aspects of the material: the hardware, the software, and the content. Apple is the best-known example of this strategy,  followed perhaps by Microsoft and Google (whose lock-in does not extend fully to hardware though). The walled garden can create many type of problems for customers; for example, there have been cases where critically-needed applications have been pre-emptively deleted from the AppStore if Apple has feared litigation.

These companies have pockets deep enough to fight the trolls, but those same pockets can also bribe the trolls. I would frame the attack behind the scenes, making the problems appear to be the fault of the company, as in the AppStore case above. Since their brand names are absolutely crucial to them, they would be more  likely to pay off (though of course they also have armies of lawyers. The balance is difficult).

A public-service note: attacks like this could be avoided by using open-source solutions, or at least by minimizing vendor lock-in. A sure way to create problems of this type is to accept a walled garden, however attractive it might look in the short run.

Am I serious? Yes and no.

No. If I actually wanted to do this, I wouldn’t write about it. Profit is made by keeping absolutely silent and working in the shadows.

Yes. The basic principles are valid. The exact sample cases I’ve suggested might or might not work. I have outlined some techniques for avoiding attacks of this type (most importantly avoiding walled gardens), but where there is money, there will be trolls.

Rest assured: there are people out there thinking precisely along these lines. Globally, masses of people are now being downsized who have the competence for this, families to feed, and negotiable moral values.  (To be consistently cynical: I am among them. I could  be good at this. We all like to think we’re on the side of the angels, but we’re not).

If someone has good ideas on how to protect the world against them (us?), I would appreciate hearing those ideas.

UN

 

Yleinen asevelvollisuus ja säästöt puolustusvoimissa

 

 

Valtiolla rahat ovat taas tiukalla, ja niin tulee ollakin. Tämän seurauksena puolustusvoimissa on tehty säästöpäätöksiä ison julkisuuden ja mekastuksen saattelemana. Vaikka olen seurannut lehdistön kirjoittelua melko tarkkaan, epäselväksi on jäänyt sisältyykö tehtyihin päätöksiin laadullisia muutoksia ja jos niin millaisia. Alla esitän vähän radikaalimman ehdotuksen jossa lähinnä varusmieskoulutuksen rakennetta ehdotetaan hieman toisenlaiseksi.

Ongelman voisi jakaa kolmeen osaan:

  1. Tarpeen määrittely
  2. Koulutuksen järjestäminen
  3. Oppimistuloksen varmistaminen


Tarpeen määrittely

Puolustusvoimat osannee määritellä mitä sotilaan pitää osata, eli määrittelemään tarpeen. Vaikka tämä tuntuu itsestään selvältä niin se voidaan hyvinkin haastaa esimerkiksi tietoverkkoturvallisuuden osalta. Jos tästä kuitenkin lähdetään, niin isoille joukoille opetettavat asiat voitaisiin avata kansalaiskeskustelulle koska niiden salassa pysyminen on epätodennäköistä. Mikä sitten on iso joukko tässä yhteydessä? Arvaisin sadan hengen motivoituneen porukan vielä pystyvän pitämään suunsa pääosin kiinni joten jossain sen yläpuolella raja voisi kulkea. Keskustelulla saataisiin avoin ja elävä dokumentti josta selviää mitä erilaisiin tehtäviin koulutettavien varusmiesten tulisi osata. Avoimessa keskustelussa on mahdollista mennä yksityiskohtiin sillä tarkkuudella kuin keskustelijoiden osaaminen ja motivaatio riittävät.

Koulutuksen järjestäminen

Menemättä liian laajalti yksityiskohtiin, otan muutaman esimerkin opetuksen järjestämisestä. Jos oletetaan useimpien sotilaiden tarvitsevan henkilökohtaisen aseen tulee heidän sitä myös osata käyttää ja huoltaa. Koulutukseen tulijoita on lähes koko palvelukseen astuva ikäluokka, koulutettavassa materiaalissa ei ole mitään salaista eivätkä varusteet ole kalliita. Olenko ainoa jonka korviin tuo kuulostaa toiminnalta jota yksityinen yrittäjä voisi sopivassa ympäristössä harjoittaa?

Toisena esimerkkinä suunnistustaito. Vaikka kyber-sodankäynti ei välttämättä edellytäkään paarmojen syötävänä seisoskelemista niin luultavasti kohtuullisen suuren joukon tulisi osata ilman GPS-signaalia päätyä haluttuun paikkaan haluttuna hetkenä, jopa pimeällä. Ei tämän taidon oppimiseen tarvita kasarmia eikä sen opettamiseen ammattisotilasta tai edes varusmiesaliupseeria.

Joissain tapauksissa suunnistaminen, urheilumielessä, vaatii kohtuullista tai jopa hyvää fyysistä kuntoa. Kunnon puute onkin lehdistössä mainittu yhdeksi palvelukseen astuvien ongelmista. Isompi ongelma on varmasti se ettei iso osa reservistä kolmekymmentä täytettyään jaksa juosta edes bussiin. Kuntovaatimusta ei kannata yhdistää kaikkiin muihin vaatimuksiin vaan mahdollisuuksien mukaan irrottaa se kokonaan muista vaatimuksista kuten suunnistamisesta ja aseen käyttämisestä. Juoksemisen ja suunnistamisen opettelu kannattaa erottaa toisistaan jotta huonokuntoisetkin voivat oppia suunnistamaan, voivat sitten päätyä sinne haluttuun paikkaan vaikka mopolla.

Väitän yllä mainittujen esimerkkien kaltaisia taitoja olevan jonkin verran (kiväärillä ampuminen, talvella telttailu, moottorikelkalla ajeleminen, …). Niiden opiskelu ja opettaminen voitaisiin helposti järjestää koulutettavan ehdoilla, hänen valitsemanaan ajankohtana. Koulutuksen ei tarvitse olla puolustusvoimien järjestämää.

Kuten useimmista toiminnoista, myös varusmiespalveluksesta on haittoja joista järjestäjä ei joudu vastaamaan. Siirtämällä koulutuksen järjestäjän ja ajankohdan valinta koulutettavalle voidaan näistä seikoista koulutettavalle aiheutuvien haittojen määrä minimoida tehokkaasti. Itse olisin esimerkiksi voinut jo 14 ikäisenä antaa paikallisen suunnistusseuran opettaa itseni suunnistamaan.

Mitä sitten jäisi puolustusvoimien opetettavaksi? Jos vaikka haluaa ampua isolla tykillä kovia, niin ehkä sen voisi ajatella olevan toimintaa joka sopisi kivasti sotilaille. En kyllä ihan heti keksi miksi niin tarvitsisi tehdä, puumallilla voi opetella mistä vivusta pitää vetää. Sikäli kun kyse on laitteen asemaan viemisestä kuorma-autoa peruuttamalla, niin sitä voi harjoitella lähimetsässä ilman tykkiä. En väitä etteikö esimerkiksi ison joukon operoimiseen tarvittava logistiikka olisi jonkin verran hankala simuloida, mutta eiköhän siitä aika hyvä saada jos nähdään vähän vaivaa.

Tuloksen varmistaminen

Monesti on nähty ettei julkisissa hankinnoissa aina saada tulosta jota tavoiteltiin. Miten sitten voitaisiin varmistaa, että paloittain yksityisten kouluttamat varusmiehet osaavat tarvittavat taidot? Koska monet kouluttajista haluaisivat varmaankin toiminnastaan rahallisen korvauksen, voitaisiin koulutuksen menestyksellisesti päättäneistä valita satunnaisesti muutama kokeeseen jossa voisivat demonstroida taitonsa ja lopettaa maksaminen jollei tuloksia näytä syntyvän. Esimerkiksi talvitelttailun osalta voitaisiin koulutus auditoida tai pyytää silloin tällöin jotakuta osallistujaa pitämään päiväkirjaa touhusta. Verkon yli tapahtuvan teoriakoulutuksen voisi tenttiä vaikka jossain oppilaitoksessa jotta henkilöllisyys varmistuisi.

Muita seikkoja

Muutama lainaus joita haluan kommentoida.

“Puolustusvoimilla on rooli varusmiesikäluokkien kansalaiskasvatuksessa.”

Jostain syystä pelkkä kansalaiskasvatus sana saa niskakarvat nousemaan pystyyn. Jos kansalaiskasvatusta välttämättä halutaan minä antaisin kasvattajan roolin muille kuin puolustusvoimille, olisko vaikka joku sairaanhoito-oppilaitos parempi??

“Paikallisjoukoissa tarjoutuu nykyistä laajemmat mahdollisuudet myös kokeneemman reservin henkilöstön monipuoliseen käyttöön yksilöllisten edellytysten mukaan.”

Tässä sivutaan oleellista seikkaa. Suomen oloissa puolustusvoimat on vähän kuin pankkiholvi. Tarkoitus ei ole estää, vaan tehdä ottamisesta niin kallista ettei se kannata. Hahmoteltu hajautettu koulutusmalli on helppo yhdistää systeemiin jossa reserviläisillä on nykyistä tiukempi rooli koko reservissä olon ajan. Sillä tavalla taitoja voidaan helposti ja vähän häiriötä aiheuttaen ylläpitää. Jos mukaan tähän yhdistetään muita kerettiläisiä komponentteja kuten esim. rahallinen palkkio reserviläistaitojen ylläpitämisestä niin osa reservistä voisi olla jopa käytettävissä sellaisessa melko lyhyessä aikaikkunassa joka on tarjolla ennen kuin vihulainen tulee massana rajan yli.

“Varusmiesten palvelusaikoja lyhennetään 15 vuorokaudella. Se mahdollistaa kotiutumisen ennen juhannusta ja joulua sekä entistä paremman osallistumisen kesällä pidettäviin oppilaitosten pääsyko-keisiin. Myös syksyllä kotiutuvan saapumiserän opiskelun aloittaminen helpottuu.”

Minä muuttaisin palveluksen pääosin itseopiskeluksi ja kurssien käymiseksi, silloin ne eivät häiritsisi elämää niin paljon kun kukin voisi hajauttaa osan palvelusajastaan useamman vuoden ajalle.

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