Aerial Drones To Help Cops In Miami

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.'"

Comments

"Tragedy struck Miami this morning...

[Anonymous Coward]

...as an unmanned police drone that was following a suspected marijuana user, crash-landed in a public swimming pool."
Headline from the future?

Airspace.

[Anonymous Coward]

What legal protection of the airspace above my property do I have?

If a drone is flying 500' or 1000', can I shoot it down?

Re:The reason the Predator flies only over desert

[mea37]

"Something that big dropping on your head from even a few feet up could easily kill you."

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

[Anonymous Coward]

That's one of the things I was concerned about... What if the thing crashes? Sorry, but the worse case scenario that I can think of, this thing crashing into a busload of kids, is not worth a slight bump in police efficiency.

And that's not even considering the privacy concerns. Sure, I know that public is public and cameras are everywhere, but I think having something capable of following you around with a camera is a much bigger deal than static cameras.

Ooh, that brings up a question... how long until the paparazzi start deploying these things to automate their celebrity-stalking?

Crashes? Just wait till interested parties start designing and deploying anti-drone devices including drone hunting drones. Who would be interested parties? Freedom loving Americans for one, organized crime and plain old car thieves and drug dealers for more and of course the already tired of being hunted celebrities. For some reason this piece brought immediately to mind that very old cartoon image of the hillbilly looking up and shouting "Tarrrrrget practice, whoo hoo, tarrrrrget practice" and others appearing behind every tree, rock and blade of grass with their rifles raised and firing away. Wonder how long before individuals are barred from owning remote controled planes and helicopters or numerous items that are involved in the hobby?

Re:And so beings the drone wars

[ChrisA90278]

Why bother with an R/C aircraft? A hunting rifle with a scope would kill a drone a lot easier. A more sophisticaled attack would be to jam the drones's radio reciever so it could not be commanded from the ground.

Actually I think these will be used just like helicopers are used but maybe at 10X less cost.

Return To Base Failsafe

[clbyjack81]

What happens when you cut its strings(jam the signal)? Will it have a hover failsafe, or will it fall straight to the ground?

Considering that there are commercial autopilots 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.