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Injured Man Is First Person Saved By a Police Drone In Canada
AchilleTalon writes "As the US continues to grapple with the idea of letting drones fly through the country's airspace, our neighbors to the north have reported a new milestone for unmanned aerial technology: the first life saved using a drone. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police in the province of Saskatchewan announced yesterday that they successfully used the small Draganflyer X4-ES helicopter drone to locate and treat an injured man whose car had flipped over in a remote, wooded area in near-freezing temperatures. Zenon Dragan, president and founder of the Draganfly company that makes the drone, said in a statement: 'to our knowledge, this is the first time that a life may have been saved with the use of a sUAS (small Unmanned Aerial System) helicopter.'"
They are a powerful technology, for good, or evil.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Of course we Canadians would use drones for polite and considerate tasks. We have a reputation to keep up!
Interesting point, but I have to disagree. The V1 was a missile, not a drone. The V1 itself constituted the attacking weapon. I think the distinction with a drone attack would be that the drone itself isn't the attacking weapon, but rather it carries weapons to attack. Example: The Predator drone which carries Hellfire missiles.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
The man's life was saved by a policeman using an infrared camera which happened to be mounted on a drone.
It's important to get the gist of the story right here, because the decision to use drones domestically is a matter of trade offs. So it makes a difference whether you draw the spurious lesson "drones save lives", or the correct lesson, "infrared cameras save lives, drones save money in deploying such cameras in comparison to conventional helicopters or fixed-wing aircraft." One might reasonably choose to risk civil liberties because of certain life-or-death situation, but not choose to do so if its a matter of another ten or twenty bucks a year on your state or provincial taxes.
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There are commercial satellites with the resolution to read your license plate
Satellites are not comparable to drones. To achieve good resolution, satellites need to be in near earth orbit, which means they are moving overhead at thousands of km/hr. They can take a snapshot, but they cannot loiter and observe continuously, and they cannot zoom in real time. They are an expensive and limited asset, which means they are not available to the local cop who has a grudge against you because you are dating his ex-girlfriend.