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Houston Police Test Unmanned Surveillance Aircraft
54mc writes "The Houston Police Department was filmed testing an unmanned aircraft in a secretive gathering on Wednesday. The media were not allowed into the event; however they were told that the aircraft would be used for 'mobility' and 'tactical' issues, and possibly even for writing traffic tickets. The aircraft has a wingspan of 10 feet and is said to cost from $30K to $1M. Pictures and video are available at the link." The article mentions that the craft was being operated by staff from a private firm called Insitu, Inc.. The device in the video looks like the firm's ScanEagle.
That's a very broad price range.
I didn't know transformers existed.
$30K to $1M? Why not just admit that you don't know how much it costs?
I can't possibly see this thing helping local law enforcement much. It's obviously not going to land next to you and physically write a ticket out, but it would probably take lots of pictures. This would be so very intrusive to have some sort of plane constantly watching over you.
Cool finaly a chance to try out my skytag
http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/tracker.shtml
The difference here is that a police helicopter is extremely expensive, and is therefore reserved for only the most serious of crimes. There are understandably very few of them, and I'll agree that they're mostly a good thing.
However, if they truly can purchase a UAV for $30k, you'll see these things buzzing around EVERYWHERE. I don't doubt that if purchased and deployed in quantity, you could purchase and operate a UAV for the fraction of the cost of a patrol car.
Earlier in the year, I got to get up close with the UAV equipment operated by PFRR, and was extremely impressed by the simplicity and portability of the system. There's really not a whole lot to it, and UAVs do indeed have some pretty awesome potential applications (military recon is an obvious one -- I'm not too keen on the moral implications of sending in automated kill-bots, but that's another discussion....). I'm just not sure that police patrols should be one of them...
I'd love to see fewer highway patrols. However, I'd also love to see fewer assholes weaving through traffic 30mph+ over the speed of the "flow", avoiding arrest by using a radar detector. Those guys are dangerous, and the speed traps to catch them are dangerous.
Unfortunately, I fear that the police will simply use this as a cash cow, and use it to ticket the average Joe going 75-80mph on an empty straight highway, which is what most highway patrols tend to do. (If you've ever driven across Pennsylvania, you'll know what I'm talking about -- it's a vast expanse of nothing).
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
I for one want to see if the same "+5 informative", "+5 insightful" inflamed comments about how a similar thing happening in Venezuela was a proof of a totalitarian government will be repeated on this thread, by the same set of people.
Normaly copters are used to supplement an active investigation. If you see one, you know something is up ( or its just the local TV station running traffic reports.. )
These things will just fly around and look at everyone, hoping to catch you with your pants down. Later they will just record every move everyone makes, regardless of any suspicion. Do you want that? I don't. Unless I'm under active court supported suspicion, they don't have a right to 'follow' me around, 'just in case'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Im sure they can find other ways of recouping the costs - not just traffic tickets but how about using Guiliani's method (when he was mayor of NYC) of using RICO to impound suspected drunk drivers cars. You had better watch your driving with one of these things flying over, because the brilliance of using RICO is that you don't have to be found guilty in a criminal court to lose your car. I bet they could make up the cost fairly quickly.
Emphasis Mine!
You sir, are a fool and will kill someone some day! You're only fooling yourself!
http://enemiesforeignanddomestic.com/excerpt7.htm
The STU [Special Training Unit] had its own single-engine Piper Lance, and had obtained a BigEye surveillance pod for it. The BigEye was a gyro-stabilized combination video camera for daytime use, and infra-red camera for night use. An operator in the plane could put the camera's cursor mark on a stationary or moving ground target and the camera would lock on to it even as the plane circled high above, out of sight and sound of its quarry.
The extensive use of light planes was a tradition in the ATF going back decades; from the time when the "revenue agents" had flown them to spot bootleg liquor stills from the air. These pilot-qualified agents bragged that for them ATF stood for 'agents that fly'. The numerous flying special agents and ATF light planes often permitted them to reach the scenes of federal crimes involving illegal firearms or explosives before any other agencies. Any one-horse Podunk town with a dirt landing strip nearby could usually have ATF agents on the ground in a few hours at most. The ATF was independently air-mobile to a greater degree than most other agencies at the light plane end of the aviation spectrum.
After a brief familiarization period with the BigEye Malvone gave his air team the addresses of a dozen senior government officials who were in a position to help the STU. They hit pay dirt on a Sunday morning in June when the Piper was flying lazy eights over Fairfax County Virginia, and they noticed activity at the estate of Deputy AG Paul Wilson. A Mercedes arrived with a young couple who turned out to be Wilson's daughter and son-in-law. Mrs. Wilson then left with them to attend church services.
Soon after the driveway's automatic gate closed behind the Mercedes, Paul Wilson had appeared in a bathrobe on the back patio of the mansion by the swimming pool, accompanied by someone else. The stabilized zoom lens of the Big Eye then recorded in intimate detail the white-haired senior federal official and a black-haired girl playing in the Jacuzzi, with no detail left to the imagination for the next fifteen minutes. Upon further investigation the girl had turned out to be the 16 year old daughter of the Wilson's Costa Rican housekeeper, who had taken the day off.
Malvone was smiling broadly at the memory. "As soon as I saw that tape I knew we'd own Wilson, we'd have him in our pocket. When the time comes he's going to go to bat for us, big time, and we'll get the Special Projects Division approved."
"The FBI's going to fight it. They'll never let ATF have a new division with that much power."
"That's where you're wrong Joe, the STU or SPD or what ever we end up calling it is going to be seen as a dirty outfit for dirty jobs, and the FBI won't want any part of it. If the SPD falls on its face, the stink won't rub off on them. They'll be glad to let the ATF have it, and let the ATF take the hit if things go wrong. By the time they figure out what's really going on, the Special Projects Division will be too big for them to stop."
"The privacy nutters never seem to come up with better arguments then "this won't allow us to break the law anymore". Fine with me, don't like the law, change it, don't break it."
What an intelligent suggestion... and one that shows your comprehensive knowledge of history! Why, if only the citizens of the USSR had known, they could have just changed the law rather than running from the gulag! Same goes for the citizens of Nazi Germany, Pol Pot's Cambodia, and even the United States under slavery. What were those people thinking, rebelling against slavery, running away from their legal owners, protesting the laws by violating them? They should have just changed the law, not broken it!
Yes, you really do seem to understand this. I applaud your pure insight. When an unjust law exists, it is our responsibility to obey it!
They do if one of these things collides with their Piper Cub or the 737 they are riding on.
Have gnu, will travel.
...and you've never seen the Autobahn at its best. No speed limit, and it WORKS. Why? Drivers who want to KEEP that lack of a speed limit driving at high rates in a usually logical manner.
I've seen it in motion. Fraggin' beautiful.
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
Just don't let the price be everything that a free democratic republic should hold dear. It's not the monetary cost, it's the cost to your liberty that is at stake.
However, that doesn't work when the speed limit doesn't reflect the speed that people are actually travelling on the road. I've seen lots of roads where the speed limit is set way below the actual speed that people travel. If you drive at the speed limit, then not only will you get a lot of other drivers really angry, but you'll probably be really unsafe too, as drivers will come up behind you at a really high speed. Also, for a little experiment in speed limits, try coordinating with 3 other people to each drive in one lane of the expressway at the speep limit. Not directly beside eachother, but with just enough room for other drivers to pass and go around you. Watch the traffic pile up behind you, and bring the city to a stand still, and watch the lack of traffic in front of you. What's really terrible is that speed limits are set such that they are not to be followed. Then they arrest you for going 2 km/h faster than the other guy, just because you happen to be going 30 km/h over the limit, and he was going 28 km/h over the limit.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Several posters have commented that the price spread is between 30k and 1 M. A quick visit to the company's web site makes it fairly clear that these drones come with a wide range of electronics. The more electronics you stuff into them, the more they cost.
;-)
They've been making and selling these for years and know darn well what they cost.
The company's capabilities are impressive. One of their first products flew across the Atlantic, in 27 hours using 1.5 gallons of gas. Any model plane builder I know would have real trouble doing the same.
Several other posters have complained about the cost. A typical remark concerns how many traffic tickets it takes to pay for the drone. At 30k, the drone costs less than a fully equipped patrol car.
Except that there is more accident on the autobahn without speed limits than on those with speed limits.
There is roughly half of the autobahn with speed limits, and two third of the accident occurs in section with speed limits.[1]
This has to be considered with knowing that the speed limits in place for the autobahn are in places supposed to be more dangerous.
Also, variable speed limits are to be seriously considered with traffic (if you're alone, go ahead break the speed, when there is someone else, though it's a different matter).[2]
What might spread the legend, is that highway in Europe (except maybe UK, and I do not know how it is for the rest of the world) are safer, in every possible ways (per road trip, per kilometer), than other roads (especially city roads).
So an highway without speed limits, the autobahn, is safer than pretty much every other roads, except highway with speed limits.
Though, be aware that even in Europe, the autobahn is often used as a point without mentioning its accident rate compared to other european highway with speed limits, but instead compared to the national rates.
[1]http://www.guardian.co.uk/germany/article/0,,2201624,00.html
[2]http://www.benefitcost.its.dot.gov/its/benecost.nsf/Print/5F01DD9F62A2282C8525733A006D4BEA
Currently police departments collect revinue by rader,laser,redlight camera or aircraft speedchecking. What they obviously want is a pilotless solution that will mindlessly, relentlessly, "tax" motorists from the air. And because its a drone aircraft its innerworkings cannot be challenged in court like they can be with a radar/laser/redlight camera/normal aircraft speedcheck. If I get a ticket for speeding by airborne speedcheck I can request the pilots flightlogs. But because the drones could potentially be used in homeland security applications makes it "top secret" you most likely can request any information. Basicly they are looking for limitless capactiy to "tax" motorists without the ability for motorists to challenge the validity. As an added bonus with the computer enhanced optics required to properly perform airborne speedchecks surveylence and tracking of anyone outdoors can be acomplished electronicly and recorded by computer for your future harassment. This occuring in texas means that the only way this isnt going to happen is if the first one in the air malfunctions and crashes into a gunshop. Then public outcry would shut down the project. But nothing will stop this from branching into the other 49 states.
The ScanEagle UAV has a maximum takeoff weight of 37.9lb, cruises at 56mph, and can carry up to 2 gallons of fuel. I think our buildings are safe.
-- Remember, we're not happy until you're not happy. -- Local FAA Inspector --
From TFA:
Houston police contacted KPRC from the test site, claiming the entire airspace was restricted by the Federal Aviation Administration. Police even threatened action from the FAA if the Local 2 helicopter remained in the area. However, KPRC reported it had already checked with the FAA on numerous occasions and found no flight restrictions around the site, a point conceded by Montalvo. When police department officials lie in an attempt to bully media out of covering simple testing of a technology, why (and how) do they expect that citizens will have *any* faith whatsoever with regard to their claimed motivations for a so-called service or, in the event of a rollout, of adherence to any privacy-related constraints/governance?It's not even off the ground yet (!) and the bullshitting has already started.
The wind blew, the crap flew, and for days the vision was bad.
[17] Leary, T., White, C., Wood, P. R., Bhabha, W. D., and Wirth, N. Lambda calculus considered harmful. In Proceedings
The range is not really that surprising.
For 30k (or 10k if you don't get ripped off), you can build an aircraft that relies on GPS + digital compass with a built in map for navigation, uses sonar for handling weaknesses in the map (e.g. the map didn't mention this aircraft just in front of me), and stores/transmits pictures (over 3G).
However, if you want to have onboard video processing then things start getting expensive very fast. A processor and graphics card powerful enough to do image processing is very hard to make small and low power (where hard is a synonym for expensive). As you start putting higher power requirements on the engine, you have to put greater weight (damn batteries) which coupled with how heavy batteries are means you have to start buying hideously expensive small/light/powerful batteries. Also, you have to do the same with every other component of the system - the motor is the most obvious but the rest of the aircraft has to be specced to handle an extra 10 pounds without being any larger or heavier.
Next, if your computer is drawing nontrivial amounts of juice, you've got to seriously think about whether you're better with a generator onboard rather than seperate batteries. Oh, and you better get a really efficient generator since you can't afford the weight of more fuel. I'm sure you can see where this is heading.
Crudely put, think about cellphone technology. What you're asking for is something like a cellphone (with a couple pretty standard addons like GPS and sonar) except you're wanting a cellphone from five years in the future in terms of power and features. How much do you think it costs to custom-build a cellphone from five years in the future today?
Finally, but perhaps most important, I've skipped over development time. These projects take a lot of work and even more testing. You can only do so much with Flight Gear before you have to build and crash a few to configure the software. Want to test the emergency radio override before you start flying this thing around the city, you'll have to crash a few in the process. Even if you're getting development at cost (ie. you hire a team of programmers to do it for you), you'll still pay around $1M and have to amortise that over all the planes you build. Few people get development at cost either - it is hard to build up a team of decent programmers so much easier to contract to a company that's already done it.
He could observe courtesy (and what the law requires in many areas) by driving in the slowest lanes thereby minimizing or eliminating any safety hazard caused by his slow driving.
It's well known that excessive speed differentials create dangerous conditions. That's why freeways have minimum speed limits and why failure to yield right of way is seriously enforced in some areas. A strong argument could be made that safety hazards created by excessively slow drivers are just as much the government's responsibility as anyone else. They're the ones setting deliberately slow speed limits that encourage drivers to ignore posted speeds and they're the one's supporting low standards of driver competence in their licensing policies. Where uniform speeds are driven, whether or not they correlate to posted speeds, driving is relatively safer. Raising speed limits, therefore, can have a beneficial effect on safety in some cases.
Today. Will it always be? Or will we install constant surveillance, which will then be used by future governments, which may or may not be as good as this one?