What was once futuristic is now right around the corner. Yes, pilotless drones patrolling the skies above Gotham (a city near you). I don't know how this will play in Taiwan, but it surely would go down in flames in most cities here in the United States — today.
While it sounds futuristic, I will not be surprised if at one point this does become more commonplace in urban areas of our nation. Certainly for wildfire applications, I'm betting this technology is not only wanted, but needed to better respond to future conflagrations like we saw in the town of Paradise, Calif., in recent days.
Automatic Police UAV Patrol System
ITRI’s Automatic Police UAV Patrol System (APUPS) provides fully automated unmanned aerial vehicle police patrols and wildfire monitoring. It significantly boosts efficiency, deployment flexibility and surveillance quality for police and firefighters, minimizing human involvement and risks during regular patrols and rescue missions. The automated system coordinates smart charging and shift changing of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and ensures the entire patrol system runs smoothly. It helps police and firefighters rapidly assess the appropriate level of response when receiving a report. In addition to performing routine patrols in urban and suburban areas, APUPS also works well for patrols in remote or distributed communities with mountainous landscapes and poor road conditions.
APUPS can be applied to emergencies such as wildfires; the patrol system can identify a fire’s starting point, monitor its spread, and display smoothly synced audio and visual signals at the ground control center, allowing firefighters to address the crisis more effectively helping to minimize injuries. APUPS can operate day or night, between zero and 40 degrees Celsius. Field testing with Taiwan’s National Police Agency has been completed, and the agency plans to implement APUPS across Taiwan in 2019.
The innovative patented APUPS technology is available for licensing to global companies who will bring it to market.
Eric Holdeman is a contributing writer for Emergency Management magazine and is the former director of the King County, Wash., Office of Emergency Management.
