Followup: June 26, 2006 —
Boing Boing reports: “FAA grounds LA Sheriffs’ plans for ’spy plane drones’ ”

Plans by the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department’s to use small, RC-controlled drones for surveillance and rescue efforts have been grounded by the FAA.
[Link]

Original post –

The drones just keep on launching:

The unmanned aerial vehicle, which looks like a child’s remote control toy and weighs about five pounds (2.3 kilograms), is a prototype being tested by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

Police say the drone, called the SkySeer, will be able to accomplish tasks too dangerous for officers and free up helicopters for other missions.
[Link]

Via Slashdot. Excerpts from Slashdot comments –

OK, I’ll bite. We got pilotless aircraft flying low and slow over neighborhoods in Los Angeles, spying on people, and the authorities say that it’s for “finding missing children and lost hikers?
[Simonetta: Link]

This made me laugh:

I frequently go hiking in Los Angeles. The current ratio of Park Rangers to hikers is apalling, and certainly needs to be dealt with.
On one of my hikes, my careless smoking habits started a forest fire. It would have been nice to have a robot camera flying around to put out the fire. The only thing is, I’ve never lost a child so I think this technology sucks.
[avarice.cc: Link]

More about SkySeer
from Octatron Inc.:

Aircraft –
Wingspan: 6.5ft (1.98m)
Total weight: 3.125 lbs (1.42kg)
Endurance: 45-60 minutes at cruise speed
Cruise Speed: 23 mph (37 kph)
Range: 2 mi (3.2km) (extensible)
Pan/Tilt: 160° pan / 90° tilt

Ground Station –
Digital video: Store up to 20 hours of high quality MPEG-2 video
Real-time flight video and telemetry: See and record what the UAV sees in real-time
Video head: Real-time joystick control of UAV pan/tilt camera head
Autonomous flight: Point and click mission planning via GPS waypoints.
[Link]

SkySeer … SkySeer … are you thinking what I’m thinking …?

The SkySeersucker — a dirigible shaped like the Michelin man in a seersucker suit, floating over Los Angeles … scare the hell out of thieves, I bet … although it might also scare off missing children or lost hikers.

CNet reports: drone security aircraft already prowling U.S. skies, more on the way …

A House of Representatives panel on Wednesday heard testimony from police agencies that envision using UAVs for everything from border security to domestic surveillance high above American cities. Private companies also hope to use UAVs for tasks such as aerial photography and pipeline monitoring.

“We need additional technology to supplement manned aircraft surveillance and current ground assets to ensure more effective monitoring of United States territory,” Michael Kostelnik, assistant commissioner at Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection Bureau, told the House Transportation subcommittee.

Kostelnik was talking about patrolling U.S. borders and ports from altitudes around 12,000 feet, an automated operation that’s currently under way in Arizona. But that’s only the beginning of the potential of surveillance from the sky.

In a scene that could have been inspired by the movie “Minority Report,” one North Carolina county is using a UAV equipped with low-light and infrared cameras to keep watch on its citizens. The aircraft has been dispatched to monitor gatherings of motorcycle riders at the Gaston County fairgrounds from just a few hundred feet in the air–close enough to identify faces–and many more uses, such as the aerial detection of marijuana fields, are planned.

Via Slashdot