Aerial Drones To Help Cops In Miami 274
Catoonsis writes "Reuters is reporting that 'Miami police could soon be the first in the United States to use cutting-edge, spy-in-the-sky technology to beef up their fight against crime.' The police force is
planning to make use of a small aerial drone, capable of hovering and quick maneuvers, to monitor the Miami-Dade area and alert officers of potential problems. The device, manufactured by Honeywell, is awaiting FAA approval before it can be put into use. This decision is just the latest chapter in the developing relationship between law enforcement and robotic assistants. 'U.S. Customs and Border Protection has been flying drones over the Arizona desert and southwest border with Mexico since 2006 and will soon deploy one in North Dakota to patrol the Canadian border as well. This month, Customs and Border Protection spokesman Juan Munoz Torres said the agency would also begin test flights of a modified version of its large Predator B drones, built by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, over the Gulf of Mexico.'"
"Tragedy struck Miami this morning... (Score:1, Interesting)
Headline from the future?
Airspace. (Score:1, Interesting)
If a drone is flying 500' or 1000', can I shoot it down?
Re:The reason the Predator flies only over desert (Score:3, Interesting)
So can a car, but I doubt we'll be outlawing those.
I'm not really convinced either way on the safety of this plan. The FAA will decide whether it's safe enough to approve, and while I don't know that I can trust their judgement 100%, it's far from the first time my safety has been impacted by their decisions.
So, pending more information, I'm not alarmed by the "crashing drones" issue.
Re:The reason the Predator flies only over desert (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:And so beings the drone wars (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually I think these will be used just like helicopers are used but maybe at 10X less cost.
Return To Base Failsafe (Score:2, Interesting)
Considering that there are commercial [microboticsinc.com] autopilots [u-nav.com] for radio control vehicles already that can return the vehicle to the take-off GPS coordinates, it seems that a company as large as Honeywell would have thought about how to get the UAV back to the 'base' in the event of a radio failure.