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Yeah, this seems like a good idea and pretty doable. Every police car could have a drone that would be useful in a variety of situations. In a traffic stop, i

Yeah, this seems like a good idea and pretty doable. Every police car could have a drone that would be useful in a variety of situations. In a traffic stop, it could take off from the roof of the police car and land on the windscreen of the stopped car. A small screen can relay instructions to the driver while he is filmed. With the prices of quite powerful drones coming down so dramatically, this might even be a cost effective way to save lives, while at the same time giving police an extra tool for lots of situations, not just traffic stops. I wonder if there's business potential in making roof mounted drones that can land on windshields. Ideally, it could also record sound by latching onto the windshield and detecting vibrations with some sort of contact or laser microphone but I'm not sure how realistic that would be (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00542-015-2795-x https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00542-015-2795-x looks like a start).

jaclaz 9y ago
I was thinking more along the lines of something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hornet_Nano https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hornet_Nano Or of the micro-bugs/robot spiders in Minority Report, I mean the idea is that the police officer can see inside the (already stopped) car, to give orders he/she can shout or use the microphone and loudspeaker, that all patrol cars have, I believe, in the US. There is always an issue with language, maybe, but the idea of the small screen with text assumes that the stopped driver can see it properly (imagine an older chap that reaches for his spectacles ...).
- kybernetikos 9y ago
  That is a very cool drone. I doubt that it needs to be so small though. I was thinking of something like a customized mavic pro. Automatic position keeping, person tracking (potentially both officers and suspects) and automatic navigation to particular locations, plus the ability to operate reasonably well in high winds and perhaps cost too argue for something a bit larger and heavier. In most countries, ability to read street signs is part of the requirement for a drivers license. Reaching for spectacles isn't as threatening if the police are back sitting in the patrol car anyway, and there are always edge cases - how do police interact with deaf drivers now? (edit: just checked, seems like they get shot disproportionately often...) But yeah, maybe the screen (which could include glyphs as well as text, or multiple languages) wouldn't work. I'd need to experiment to see what sort of size you could get away with and how reliably you could make sure it was visible. Of course having a screen doesn't preclude the use of loudspeaker either.
  - jaclaz 9y ago
    >In most countries, ability to read street signs is part of the requirement for a drivers license. Older people tend to develop presbyopia, they can see and read signs alright, i.e. they drive normally without correction lenses but they need them to read at "windscreen distance". At least at the time my father managed to collect a fair number of speed tickets, claiming that he couldn't see properly the speedometer. As a side note, "in most countries" traffic stops ending up in a shooting or more generally people shot by police are much more rare than in the US. The (unofficial) numbers reported on this Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_firearm_use_by_country#Comparison_of_countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_firearm_use_by_country#... are impressive.
ramses0 9y ago
If you can make a connection with the right type of corruption, there definitely would be government funds available to increase the ability of the government (federal, state, and local police) to project power. Drone + facetime + blinking red light + emergency grenade (tear-gas, of course). $1k parts, sell it for $10k/ea in bundles of 10 along with "police drone training certification level 8999" at $5k per student (minimum 5 students).

jaclaz 9y ago

I was thinking more along the lines of something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hornet_Nano https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hornet_Nano Or of the micro-bugs/robot spiders in Minority Report, I mean the idea is that the police officer can see inside the (already stopped) car, to give orders he/she can shout or use the microphone and loudspeaker, that all patrol cars have, I believe, in the US. There is always an issue with language, maybe, but the idea of the small screen with text assumes that the stopped driver can see it properly (imagine an older chap that reaches for his spectacles ...).

kybernetikos 9y ago
That is a very cool drone. I doubt that it needs to be so small though. I was thinking of something like a customized mavic pro. Automatic position keeping, person tracking (potentially both officers and suspects) and automatic navigation to particular locations, plus the ability to operate reasonably well in high winds and perhaps cost too argue for something a bit larger and heavier. In most countries, ability to read street signs is part of the requirement for a drivers license. Reaching for spectacles isn't as threatening if the police are back sitting in the patrol car anyway, and there are always edge cases - how do police interact with deaf drivers now? (edit: just checked, seems like they get shot disproportionately often...) But yeah, maybe the screen (which could include glyphs as well as text, or multiple languages) wouldn't work. I'd need to experiment to see what sort of size you could get away with and how reliably you could make sure it was visible. Of course having a screen doesn't preclude the use of loudspeaker either.
- jaclaz 9y ago
  >In most countries, ability to read street signs is part of the requirement for a drivers license. Older people tend to develop presbyopia, they can see and read signs alright, i.e. they drive normally without correction lenses but they need them to read at "windscreen distance". At least at the time my father managed to collect a fair number of speed tickets, claiming that he couldn't see properly the speedometer. As a side note, "in most countries" traffic stops ending up in a shooting or more generally people shot by police are much more rare than in the US. The (unofficial) numbers reported on this Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_firearm_use_by_country#Comparison_of_countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_firearm_use_by_country#... are impressive.

ramses0 9y ago

If you can make a connection with the right type of corruption, there definitely would be government funds available to increase the ability of the government (federal, state, and local police) to project power. Drone + facetime + blinking red light + emergency grenade (tear-gas, of course). $1k parts, sell it for $10k/ea in bundles of 10 along with "police drone training certification level 8999" at $5k per student (minimum 5 students).