A New Human-Seeking Drone, Much Cheaper Than a Predator 178
An anonymous reader writes with this envy-inspiring bit from Gizmodo on the Aeryon Scout Quadrotor: "The drone, packing a camera that can ID a human from almost two miles away (using a standard digital cam or thermal vision), can be hand-assembled. Once in the sky, it gyro-orients itself to track whatever it is you're tracking, can hit speeds of over 30 MPH, and is all controllable with a touch remote. Tap a target, and watch the drone zoom over. It's not going to rain down any Hellfire missiles, but hey, it only weighs a kilogram."
Re:Radar (Score:5, Informative)
depending on size - having not gotten to TFA yet
Here's a better article on it with some pictures that show scale (in case you're not on board with the video craze): http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/military-robots/aeryon-scout-quadrotor-spies-on-bad-guys-from-above [ieee.org]
It can easily fit in a small suitcase, so no, you're not going to be mounting firearms on it.
Re:Radar (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Hand assembled? (Score:5, Informative)
Hand assembled wasn't the only misstatement in the article. It can't "ID" a person from 2 "miles" away. The narrator clearly says "with its 425mm equivalent zoom lens it can detect a human from over 2 kilometers away." Of course, we can blame jizmodo for these screwups, as it's their article which is quoted in TFS.
Re:Cheaper than a predator (Score:4, Informative)
That's probably referring to something else (like radio communication range), as the top speed is given as 50 km/h (which would give it a battery life of about 3 minutes if it only had enough juice for 3 km/h).
Article I saw gave it a battery life of 25 mins.