The machine can detect fires, check on criminals, and locate lost people.
Bye bye drones and helicopters: here’s the remote control police in the sky.
It looks like a UFO, but it’s man-made. No less than 240 engineers and researchers worked on it. It can fly at a speed of 80 km/h, at altitudes up to 9,000 feet. Its built-in computer can make 16 million calculations per second. Its 360° thermal cameras can spot temperature variations of 5 degrees and can read license plates from an altitude of 900 feet. It send its images together with its GPS co-ordinates to the base. And it cost 25 million euros to develop.
The primary goal of the machine is to spot fires in their early stages, but more sinister applications are also in development. The police wants to use it as an eye-in-the-sky in case of urban riots, and the Pentagon plans to conduct tests to see if the machine can be used to carry gases used for crowd control.
The potential crime-busting applications should be no surprise to those who know the inventor: it’s the boss of Taser France, the company that also produces the infamous Taser gun.
On a positive note: if the market is ready, the production of the machine could employ up to 200 highly qualified people.
