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> an unnamed mayor asked the Marine Corps to use a drone to find potholes in the mayor's city Let's play a guessing game! San Diego? We've got Miramar and Cam

> an unnamed mayor asked the Marine Corps to use a drone to find potholes in the mayor's city Let's play a guessing game! San Diego? We've got Miramar and Camp Pendleton here, along with crumbling infrastructure and terrible potholes. Although the city certainly doesn't need help finding potholes around here... Using drones for this kind of thing actually makes a lot of sense, although not a $20 million militarized Predator.

toomuchtodo 11y ago
A bit overkill no? Could you not just partner with Google Maps and use the phone accelerometer to detect potholes?
- Zigurd 11y ago
  There are both crowdsourced and fleet-oriented apps and systems to do that, and anyone in charge of a bid would know this within 5 minutes of googling the topic from a cold start. It is such a lame excuse I'm inclined to call BS and think it's a cover story.
  - SocksCanClose 11y ago
    could also use non-military-grade satellite photos and this technique: www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA458753
  - madaxe_again 11y ago
    It's either a cover or the kind of propaganda gig that you see in military dictatorships - "Troops rescue cat from tree!" "Paratroopers deployed to give children candy!" "Death squad visits old people's home with cake!"
  - ErikAugust 11y ago
    You nailed it. Of course it's a cover story. It's USA Today - the newspaper they sell at McDonald's.
- jallmann 11y ago
  > A bit overkill no? For just potholes, yeah, but there is a lot of other municipal infrastructure that could benefit from aerial inspection, especially if they are in non-public, low traffic or otherwise inaccessible areas.
- tomaskafka 11y ago
  Google has Waze. Waze has pothole detection.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    Today I learned! Thank you! Waze also has Morgan Freeman's voice for navigation. Glorious!
josho 11y ago
Or crowd source it by having commuters register potholes.. That also gives you a sense of priority based on number of calls for a given area. Militarizing cities for potholes is just plain wrong. That's something you'd expect to hear from a Stalinist regime, not a democratic nation.
- radiorental 11y ago
  There's an app for that http://www.streetbump.org/about http://www.streetbump.org/about
  - keehun 11y ago
    That seems like a good idea but a slight overkill. Why not allow the residents to submit specific location info/pictures of potholes? I wouldn't want to send the city of Boston every car trip I take--especially since I usually do my best to drive around potholes and then it wouldn't be registered in the app.
    - oplav 11y ago
      I think in many US cities, you can call 311 for city services, which include reporting potholes.
      - slavik81 11y ago
        In Calgary there's a 311 app that let's you take a GPS-tagged photo, attach a note, and open a ticket with the city.
  - ToastyMallows 11y ago
    You can also report potholes on Waze. Some city governments actively follow Waze [0], so it would be easy for people to report potholes, and the government to watch and see where they need to be filled. [0] http://www.wkyt.com/home/headlines/Kentucky-Transportation-Cabinet-Waze-team-up-287835411.html http://www.wkyt.com/home/headlines/Kentucky-Transportation-C...
guelo 11y ago
My city uses SeeClickFix for easy resident reporting, works great. http://en.seeclickfix.com/ http://en.seeclickfix.com/
- Symbiote 11y ago
  I like https://www.fixmystreet.com/ https://www.fixmystreet.com/ more, since it's open source. They don't have any sites in the US, but there are several other countries represented: http://fixmystreet.org/sites/ http://fixmystreet.org/sites/
branchless 11y ago
They used this in Montreal and found an integer overflow.
tzs 11y ago
> Using drones for this kind of thing actually makes a lot of sense, although not a $20 million militarized Predator. The later might make some sense, though, as part of training for the drone operators. Spotting a small disturbance in the surface of a street such as a pothole could require similar skills to spotting a small disturbance in the surface of a street due to someone having buried a timed or remote-control explosive there. Similar considerations could apply to many other uses of military drones in civilian operations. Using a military drone to find a missing hiker in a state park, for example, would involve similar skills to using a drone to find a missing military pilot shot down in hostile territory. In fact, aside from actually shooting guns or missiles at people or dropping bombs, I'd expect that for most skills that a military drone pilot needs for their military missions there are civilian situations where those same skills are useful, and for which using their skills in those civilian situations would improve their ability to do their military missions. As long as proper safeguards are in place to make sure that they are not put to use in ways that violate our rights, and these civilian uses have a military justification (such as providing cheap or convenient training for the drone operators), I'm open to considering allowing these uses.
- condescendence 11y ago
  >The later might make some sense, though, as part of training for the drone operators. Spotting a small disturbance in the surface of a street such as a pothole could require similar skills to spotting a small disturbance in the surface of a street due to someone having buried a timed or remote-control explosive there. Okay never thought of that situation, it would be a good training scenario.
fapjacks 11y ago
It wouldn't surprise me at all. Up here in Carlsbad, someone is flying an IMSI catcher over the city out of Palomar every couple of weeks or so. I have no doubt they wouldn't bat an eyelash at flying military drones in the sky.
porpoisemonkey 11y ago
Your cost is a little off. The Predator system costs $20 million which includes 4 aircraft and a ground station. Each aircraft is roughly $4 million. According to Time Magazine the operating cost of a single MQ-1 Predator per flight hour is $3,679 which might actually make it cost effective depending on the size of the area to be imaged. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-1_Predator https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-1_Predato... http://nation.time.com/2013/04/02/costly-flight-hours/ http://nation.time.com/2013/04/02/costly-flight-hours/
ogsharkman 11y ago
I'd say any city in Michigan...except we don't need drones to see them since I'm pretty sure you can seem them from the ISS....

toomuchtodo 11y ago

A bit overkill no? Could you not just partner with Google Maps and use the phone accelerometer to detect potholes?

Zigurd 11y ago
There are both crowdsourced and fleet-oriented apps and systems to do that, and anyone in charge of a bid would know this within 5 minutes of googling the topic from a cold start. It is such a lame excuse I'm inclined to call BS and think it's a cover story.
- SocksCanClose 11y ago
  could also use non-military-grade satellite photos and this technique: www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA458753
- madaxe_again 11y ago
  It's either a cover or the kind of propaganda gig that you see in military dictatorships - "Troops rescue cat from tree!" "Paratroopers deployed to give children candy!" "Death squad visits old people's home with cake!"
- ErikAugust 11y ago
  You nailed it. Of course it's a cover story. It's USA Today - the newspaper they sell at McDonald's.
jallmann 11y ago
> A bit overkill no? For just potholes, yeah, but there is a lot of other municipal infrastructure that could benefit from aerial inspection, especially if they are in non-public, low traffic or otherwise inaccessible areas.
tomaskafka 11y ago
Google has Waze. Waze has pothole detection.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  Today I learned! Thank you! Waze also has Morgan Freeman's voice for navigation. Glorious!

josho 11y ago

Or crowd source it by having commuters register potholes.. That also gives you a sense of priority based on number of calls for a given area. Militarizing cities for potholes is just plain wrong. That's something you'd expect to hear from a Stalinist regime, not a democratic nation.

radiorental 11y ago
There's an app for that http://www.streetbump.org/about http://www.streetbump.org/about
- keehun 11y ago
  That seems like a good idea but a slight overkill. Why not allow the residents to submit specific location info/pictures of potholes? I wouldn't want to send the city of Boston every car trip I take--especially since I usually do my best to drive around potholes and then it wouldn't be registered in the app.
  - oplav 11y ago
    I think in many US cities, you can call 311 for city services, which include reporting potholes.
    - slavik81 11y ago
      In Calgary there's a 311 app that let's you take a GPS-tagged photo, attach a note, and open a ticket with the city.
- ToastyMallows 11y ago
  You can also report potholes on Waze. Some city governments actively follow Waze [0], so it would be easy for people to report potholes, and the government to watch and see where they need to be filled. [0] http://www.wkyt.com/home/headlines/Kentucky-Transportation-Cabinet-Waze-team-up-287835411.html http://www.wkyt.com/home/headlines/Kentucky-Transportation-C...

guelo 11y ago

My city uses SeeClickFix for easy resident reporting, works great. http://en.seeclickfix.com/ http://en.seeclickfix.com/

Symbiote 11y ago
I like https://www.fixmystreet.com/ https://www.fixmystreet.com/ more, since it's open source. They don't have any sites in the US, but there are several other countries represented: http://fixmystreet.org/sites/ http://fixmystreet.org/sites/

branchless 11y ago

They used this in Montreal and found an integer overflow.

tzs 11y ago

> Using drones for this kind of thing actually makes a lot of sense, although not a $20 million militarized Predator. The later might make some sense, though, as part of training for the drone operators. Spotting a small disturbance in the surface of a street such as a pothole could require similar skills to spotting a small disturbance in the surface of a street due to someone having buried a timed or remote-control explosive there. Similar considerations could apply to many other uses of military drones in civilian operations. Using a military drone to find a missing hiker in a state park, for example, would involve similar skills to using a drone to find a missing military pilot shot down in hostile territory. In fact, aside from actually shooting guns or missiles at people or dropping bombs, I'd expect that for most skills that a military drone pilot needs for their military missions there are civilian situations where those same skills are useful, and for which using their skills in those civilian situations would improve their ability to do their military missions. As long as proper safeguards are in place to make sure that they are not put to use in ways that violate our rights, and these civilian uses have a military justification (such as providing cheap or convenient training for the drone operators), I'm open to considering allowing these uses.

condescendence 11y ago
>The later might make some sense, though, as part of training for the drone operators. Spotting a small disturbance in the surface of a street such as a pothole could require similar skills to spotting a small disturbance in the surface of a street due to someone having buried a timed or remote-control explosive there. Okay never thought of that situation, it would be a good training scenario.

fapjacks 11y ago

It wouldn't surprise me at all. Up here in Carlsbad, someone is flying an IMSI catcher over the city out of Palomar every couple of weeks or so. I have no doubt they wouldn't bat an eyelash at flying military drones in the sky.

porpoisemonkey 11y ago

Your cost is a little off. The Predator system costs $20 million which includes 4 aircraft and a ground station. Each aircraft is roughly $4 million. According to Time Magazine the operating cost of a single MQ-1 Predator per flight hour is $3,679 which might actually make it cost effective depending on the size of the area to be imaged. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-1_Predator https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-1_Predato... http://nation.time.com/2013/04/02/costly-flight-hours/ http://nation.time.com/2013/04/02/costly-flight-hours/

ogsharkman 11y ago

I'd say any city in Michigan...except we don't need drones to see them since I'm pretty sure you can seem them from the ISS....