Bloody Commies
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Miami cops trial 'hover and stare' ducted-fan Dalek
Miami police have purchased a small Dalek-like aerial surveillance droid capable of "hover and stare" missions. The American cops intend to trial the flying wastebin surveillance platform in urban "tactical operations". "Hover-&-stare" in Army hands. The machine in question is Honeywell's Micro Air Vehicle, or MAV, also in …
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Thursday 21st February 2008 01:10 GMT Anonymous Coward
Doesn't Like Wind
I've been to where they test the thing, it can't fly if it's too windy. There have been crashes. Nothing out there but abandoned uranium mines and the Bibo Bar (great hamburgers & steaks). A crash in a large city ought to be exciting. About like the sheriff's helicopter somebody shot down here a few years ago.
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Thursday 21st February 2008 01:10 GMT Jon Tocker
So, does it...
... make its own way to the local service station and fill itself up when it "gets hungry"?
If not, then having personnel refuel a fleet (flock? Gaggle/Skein/Murder?) of these things every hour of air time is going to get costly in time, effort and wages.
I bet they want it purely for the "intimidation" value - nothing says "we're serious about using technology to catch dangerous drivers" more than having several thousand dollars worth of airborne spy hovering above the road - too bad that the departmental budget would be pretty-much cleaned out.
Whatever they invest in these things, they would get a lot more coverage if that money were spent on far less showy and less complicated devices - like cameras on poles.
FFS, a traditional ground-based Dalek body equipped with a camera would suffice if they really wanted it to "be mobile and look high-tech".
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Thursday 21st February 2008 01:49 GMT b shubin
Electric idea
soon to be followed by a high-energy capacitor dart, as an effective countermeasure. think Taser for robots, shooting longer range and high-precision, with a charged self-contained projectile. pumps enough juice into your flying surveillance drone to transform it into a nice paperweight. can probably get an upgrade to handle land-based sniperbots, too. perhaps we can get a high capacitance from the new metamaterials...
otherwise, i suppose a particle beam would work too.
yeah, so i'm stealing it all from Shadowrun, but they seem to have gotten a few things very right.
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Thursday 21st February 2008 08:57 GMT Anonymous Coward
re: So, does it...
"Whatever they invest in these things, they would get a lot more coverage if that money were spent on far less showy and less complicated devices - like cameras on poles."
Jon, in America, we'd call those pole camera's 'targets' and you could probably count their service life in hours if not minutes...
Doesn't mean that the flying fan thingies aren't going to shot at too, it's just upping the skill level required to knock one down - moving targets vs fixed would be a little more challenging.
On another point, I second the motion for Princess Leia in a chain-mail Bikini...
The Paris icon because I think she'd look pretty good in one too.
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Thursday 21st February 2008 09:30 GMT Anonymous Coward
Usage
Guys, read the article.
It says the intended use: "...urban tactical operations...".
Not as a loitering surveillance platform. Getting some eyes in the sky on a hostage situation that can get a bit closer than a full-blown chopper, or view from angles the helo couldn't get too because of space or hostile threat. It's going to be operating in areas already cleared of "innocent bystanders".
It can reach considerably greater heights than a camera gaffa'ed to a stick.
It's not autonomous, either. It needs an operator.
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