Back in the 1980s, there was this rather corny movie known as Robocop, with the timeline then being set in the year 2029. All right, the idea of it all did tickle my imagination and fancy back when I was a wee lad, but still, when you watch it today, you might wonder how did they come up with such stuff in the past. Having said that, the St. Louis Police Department is looking to robots to help them in the fight against crime, by placing a request for robot drones in order to perform patrols over the skies.
The city police Chief Sam Dotson has hopes that such robot surveillance drones will eventually take to the skies of St. Louis within a year, although one might wonder what kind of privacy issues that having such robot drones patrol our skies would breach. At the very least, it is nice to know that these surveillance drones will not carry weapons, and they are tiny enough to find their way around, being as small as a coffee cup in some instances. So far, the St. Louis Police Department has already placed a request from the Federal Aviation Administration so that they can use these unmanned surveillance vehicles. One thing’s for sure, these are more mobile than helicopters, are less obvious, and obviously, easier on the pocket, costing less than $10,000 a pop compared to a $2.5 million helicopter.
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