More Georgia police departments are using drones to get to the scene first when you call 911.
Channel 2’s Michael Doudna looked at where the technology is heading next and got an exclusive look inside the new Cobb County building where drones will soon be built.
Drones can seem like something out of a movie – an all-seeing eye in the sky.
“It’s a flying robot, and it’s giving the people in law enforcement and public safety superpowers,” said Noreen Charlton who works in public safety strategy at Skydio.
But soon those superpowers may come in faster and smaller drones including the R-10 that can fit in your hand.
“So, we’re really focused on getting smaller indoor drones into the hands of all patrol officers,” said Charlton.
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She said the idea is to give officers on the streets the same advantage of a SWAT team – a line of sight without putting a life on the line.
“The impact is better safety. It’s the officer knowing what they’re walking into before they enter a structure,” said Charlton.
And that’s just the beginning, Skydio will soon have fixed-wing drones that can fly up to 90 miles per hour.
“Those are higher-speed drones. They can fly for a longer time. And we’re looking at things like vehicle pursuits,” said Charlton.
“We just see them as flying cameras,” said Rahul Sidhu Fock Safety’s Vice President of Aviation.
He gave Channel 2 Action News an exclusive look at their new Alpha drone capable of combining AI and a powerful camera to recognize stolen cars, amber alerts and even gunshots.
“So, imagine a gunshot occurs, a drive-by shooting in your city. The drone is going to automatically know oh, there’s a gunshot here. I’m going to fly to that location,” said Sidhu.
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That drone will be made here in Georgia.
Only Channel 2 Action News got inside to see construction of Flock Safety’s new factory in Cobb County.
“This facility is built to be part office, part manufacturing, because one of our philosophies is work where you build,” said Sidhu.
Inside the 96,000 square foot facility workers will invent and build the drones of the future.
“We’re hiring 250 more people to work out of this facility in both manufacturing, research, and development and shipping logistics,” said Sidhu.
But as the technology gets better the concern is where is the line between public safety and personal privacy?
“The definition of safety can switch very easily, right?” said Emory University Professor Rajiv Garg.
He said as technology becomes more common it’s uses become more accepted.
“If you start giving these permissions, if you started trusting in time, they could use it for anything,” said Garg.
Both Flock and Skydio said they do not offer facial recognition, but those drone images could be used for facial recognition if departments use another company’s software.
“If they were integrating it with another technology, they have the images,” said Charlton.
“We need policies. We need guardrails. We need regulations,” said Garg.
It is now up to police and the communities they serve to come up with those regulations.
Not only will the next generation of drones be able to get to emergencies faster, they’ll also be able to stay up in the air longer.
Battery technology is getting better and there are multi-drone systems so officers and firefighters can fly more than one drone at a time.
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