Police Scotland has unveiled a new aerial drone system to help in searches for missing and vulnerable people.
The remotely-piloted aircraft system (RPAS) can see things we can't to try to work out where people are.
It uses advanced cameras and neural computer networks to spot someone it is looking for - from "a speck" up to 150 metres away.
Its recognition software is compact enough to be run on a phone, with the technology learning as it goes.
"The drone itself has very special sensors on it," said Insp Nicholas Whyte, of Police Scotland's air support unit.
"There's a very highly-powered optical camera which can allow us to see things quite clearly from a good height. Also, there's a thermal imaging sensor which detects heat.
"We're there to find people. People who need our help or people who are lost."
The system is the result of a collaboration involving Police Scotland, the technology multinational Thales and the University of the West of Scotland (UWS).
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 05 2019, @04:28AM (3 children)
It's such a shame the Troubles had to end; spy drones would be so perfect to track Irish terrorists.
(Score: 3, Touché) by maxwell demon on Tuesday November 05 2019, @01:21PM
Don't worry, the Brexiteers are currently working hard on restarting them.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 05 2019, @02:00PM (1 child)
They're Irish... you just had to walk into any pub.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 05 2019, @04:44PM
In London, at the rump end of the IRA's bombing campaign, I was on a bit of a pub crawl (not that an uncommon occurrence..being of the one, true 'mixed blood'...Scots-Irish...squared, if you want to include the Catholic-Protestant family mix), got to the Wimbledon area, spotted a rather nice old large pub, headed in its direction to be pulled back by one of my Irish mates and was told, nope, Irish only, even then, only certain Irish only, even himself, a Republican, wasn't welcome, as he wasn't Republican enough.(probably just as well I didn't get in, had I gotten drunk enough, I'd have tried winding the buggers up by mentioning that my mother's Irish Catholic aunt married a Black and Tan...).
There wasn't any overt sign that this was an 'Irish Pub' no 'Plastic Paddy' trappings..was told that a good way back then of telling who 'ran' any pub in England was to check if the Guinness on tap was from London or Dublin.
What I also remember from back then, there were more Aussies in your average random London pub than Irish..obviously, areas like Brixton and Kilburn were exceptions..legendary pub crawls in the Oxford and Abingdon areas years later, don't recall many Irish around (especially in Abingdon pubs, again, for obvious reasons) but, plenty of Aussies again...From Gladgow pub crawls, there are pubs where wearing anything green will get you refused service (best outcome..) and any Irish accent other than Ulster will get you 'ejected'.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by pipedwho on Tuesday November 05 2019, @05:29AM (8 children)
People who are undesirable. People on someone's 'shit' list. People who do not agree with the 'party line'. People.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 05 2019, @05:40AM (1 child)
No no, see you have it all wrong. We'll equip the drone with a tazer so if the missing person's cell phone needs charging we can remotely discharge 20,000V directly to the missing person. And a robot will be sent to the site to take them to a special missing person's facility conveniently located in a 3rd country. Nice and safe.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 05 2019, @07:10AM
People we have orders to hit with a missile from a drone, because the US Military is all about following orders and assassinating the enemies of The House of Saud.
Ferking Mercenaries! Hope they all die before they get any Veteran benefit, and I say this as a Vet myself. The Nuremberg Tribunals set the standards, soliders! If you do not know what that means, your training is defective, and perhaps it is time to ask, "why"?
Soldiers are not assassins. Assassins are not soldiers. (Hint: They are pot smokers!) Hired killers are not soldiers. Soldiers are not hired killers. George W. Bush is a mercenary bastard, and he knows it. All hat, no cattle; all bravado, no courage.
(Score: 2) by BsAtHome on Tuesday November 05 2019, @05:50AM (2 children)
Yes, all those people, who have turned off their television set or hidden it behind a painting.
35 years after the predictions we are getting there.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Tuesday November 05 2019, @06:08AM (1 child)
This TV has an off switch! That's illegal!
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Tuesday November 05 2019, @01:23PM
TVs with an off switch are extremely rare these days. Most only come ith a standby switch labelled as “off”.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 05 2019, @06:19AM
The future is getting grim. I want a refund!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 05 2019, @07:37AM
Well, true, more or less...
It's amazing how fast those 'people who need our help' (into the back of a paddy wagon) disappear when they hear the dulcet tones of the polis Scotland's whirlypig squad echoing up and down the Clyde valley as they rush to be helpful..
Let's face it, from their POV, drones are both cheaper to run and, well, a lot sneakier than helicopters, and no pesky ADS-B to worry about either (and drones are less likely to kill people when 'operator error' crash lands them into pubs)
The polis will be very happy having a fleet o' flying clype tail clippit arses to play with, of course, purely to search for the 'missing' and 'vulnerable'...as we say here, 'Aye, right...and d'ye think I came up the Clyde in a banana boat?'
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Tuesday November 05 2019, @11:35AM
True story, can confirm. See my journal.
This will find 1 missing person for every 10 million people harassed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 05 2019, @07:10AM
If they're going to go through with this, can they at least make them look cool like the City Scanners from Half-Life 2?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtnHPNlzCz8 [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fM2FTGK_pCI [youtube.com]