
UK Police Introduce Microdrones 3,017 Views - Click for Larger Image
The British police are now testing spy drones made by Microdrones GmbH, a German company.
The drones can be deployed in a variety of ways, including surveillance and crowd control. For example, the Staffordshire Police tested the drones during a rock festival.
The Microdrone GMBH video is very instructive.
- The drone has very steady GPS positioning.
- It is very quiet because it is electrically powered
- The drone has a loudspeaker to keep the people below behaving
In the video, there is a peeping shot of a bikini sunbather, which demonstrates how intrusive the gadget can be.
The drones cost about £30,000 or can be leased for £1,000 a month – a fraction of what it costs to put a helicopter into the air.
As the video below shows, its something of a contrast to the Honeywell craft we looked at earlier on in the week. It's battery powered, so it's quieter -- apparently at 350 feet it is rarely noticed from the ground -- but more limited in terms of performance (flight time is about twenty minutes compared to an hour). Although it might seem flimsy, the video shows how stable it is in flight. It is said to be quite rugged and can return to base even if it loses two of its four rotor blades. One unusual feature is a speaker so that police can give instructions to those on the ground.
(blog.wired)
References: microdrones, blog.wired
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