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I was wondering if tracking drones could be cheap enough to be used to monitor / limit low levewl anti social behaviours?
The specific case around here is the scroates on stolen mopeds and MX bikes. They buzz around annoying people and nicking stuff as they ride past. If the plod bother to show up the bikes just ride off down a footpath or across a playing field and sit there flicking the Vs at the cops.
Could the drones be launched and when the image of the crim is tagged on their camera they just follow them. The crim would ride off and the drone would follow with GPS giving the location.
Clearly it would have limited range but most of this type of stuff is done within a couple of miles of the crims houses.
Can drones fly themselves and track like this?
And for places where you can't fly and there are no stairs
I'm sure it's all possible with current technology and in theory you could replace an expensive manned Helicopter with UAVs, I'm not sure the small battery powered ones would be great, but civilian versions of surveillance UAVs maybe, they have camera technology that means they could stay quite high and track people without being noticed.
Not sure it would be all that popular with the public, and I don't have enough faith in the Police that when they're not tracking "scrotes on stolen MX bikes" they wouldn't be busy looking for other 'crimes' they do love a easy win or two to help the numbers.
sharkatack - you are right. We would obviously have to arm them with bigger lasers and weapons than the kids on mopeds 🙂
One day maybe.
They already use helicopters for similar stuff, and the police already use drones so it's not a massive leap.
As you say though, distance, battery, etc. would need to be sorted first.
I'm sure its coming. If you're going to start flying drones over populated areas then you are into the realms of aircraft design as you'll have to design them like proper UAV aircraft that will have to hook into Air Traffic, demonstrate reliability and continued Airworthiness as you don't want these things falling out of the sky and onto peoples houses or heads as they wait for the number 56 bus into town. So basically talking several hundreds of millions if not a few billion pounds to develop, certify and bring to market making these things pretty pricy bits of kit to buy, maintain and operate. You're not talking about PC plod pulling out a DJI Mavic Air from the boot of his Panda car and flying around on his iPhon. Probably just cheaper to use a helicopter.
Just give the police rifles, they can just shoot the scrotes whilst they're on the mopeds.
https://www.west-midlands.police.uk/frequently-asked-questions/police-drones
of course:
and I don’t have enough faith in the Police that when they’re not tracking “scrotes on stolen MX bikes” they wouldn’t be busy looking for other ‘crimes’ they do love a easy win or two to help the numbers.
like filming people going for a walk in Lockdown1
https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7wnzm/government-flying-predator-drones-american-cities
"The Government is Regularly Flying Predator Drones Over American Cities"
Wouldn't put it past the UK Gov to be doing it over us. You'd/we'd never know.