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Google Testing an Airborne Camera Drone
mbone writes "The Blogoscoped site carries news that Google has purchased a German 'Microdrone' for evaluation (here is the original German version). These devices can take off, fly a mission, and land automatically using GPS. They can carry night-vision cameras or even 'see-through-walls' Far IR cameras. Of course, the maker of these drones assures us that they cannot be a 'Big Brother in the sky' because that is 'verboten.' Is it just me, or is Google entering dangerous airspace here? It seems like the ruckus from a backyard-after-dark addition to Street View could completely overshadow the legal tussles Google has already encountered with its street-level photography." Reader Jaymi clues us to another airborne effort a couple of Google employees are mounting with some help from NASA Ames: the NexusOne PhoneSat project — to determine if low-cost mobile phone components can withstand space travel.
Personally, I think it makes total sense for Google to consider a fleet of small, cheap, stable camera platforms that can take detailed pictures of an area and update the Google maps service. Consider how helpful it would be if they were sent out weekly to major construction zones along rodes that cause all sorts of detours and traffic issues, so when you check a route on Google maps you wont be told to take non-existing or unaccessible roads/offramps/turns/etc.
I don't see how these would be any different than their existing aerial photography. All of the high resolution stuff they have is from planes with cameras at a few thousand feet. I'm guessing they want to integrate this into their existing street view runs. As the van drives around, they launch one or more of these up to refresh their overhead images. After 45 minutes or so, they run low on battery, and fly back to the van for replacement and download. You make the route planning automated, the drivers spend a couple minutes every hour doing maintenance, and now everything Google uses is owned by them rather than licensed from some 3rd party.
Then repeal the 2nd amendment of the US Constitution, or stfu.
yes in fact you can buy the required sign from these folks http://www.mossberg.com/products/default.asp?id=1§ion=products
(please of course check your local regs before purchasing)
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Those microdrones can fly at ridiculous heights.
For all intents and purposes they are a plane. Just slower, more stable and easier to set up and use.
They Live.
I have never heard of a warrant a warrant being needed to conduct surveillance. It is not the same as a search. In any case those laws usually only apply to the government, which Google is not.
Yeah, because we all know that Google would never spy on anyone, or partner with anyone who does, like say the CIA.
http://www.dailytech.com/Former+Agent+Says+Google+and+CIA+in+Partnership/article4774.htm
http://www.dailypaul.com/node/141153
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/07/exclusive-google-cia/
I was doing papers at university in Satelite imagery in 2001 at time of the trade Towers attack. Our dept had its own image server and direct image purchase ability to many institutions including the satelite owners. We could buy images like you can buy stock photography images of image stock websites.
The Kronos satellite(50cm greyscale resolution, 100cm truecolor) was turned to snap images of the twin towers and we had those images within some 35 minutes of the 9/11 attacks.
The point I make is, when there is the capability, and when the desire is there, pretty much anything is achievable. Someone at Kronos Satellite took it upon themselves to abandon the current photography job and turn the satellite to the twin towers.
Was that person authorised? I have always wondered.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
FAA rules require that "hobbyist" UAVs be operated under strict visual line of sight (see, for example, FAA AIR-160, UAS Interim Operational Approval Guidance 08-01). And as I understand it, commercial UAVs have much stricter rules, and currently aren't allowed to fly over major roads or populated areas.
To illustrate how daunting the regulatory environment is, a multimillion-dollar research project on UAVs for tornado research (part of Vortex 2) has "learning to interact with the FAA" at the top of its research agenda.
Given that, I don't grok the value of the GPS-guided flight, unless they're planning to use them only outside the US or to sell them to the military.