Sooner or later we will all be spied upon by a drone like this.

May 2, 2012 Drones

David Cenciotti

TV coverage of sport events once relied on helicopters. Today, live video is provided by cameras carried by micro-drones like the one depicted in the image below.

Used to film auto or skiing races, such “Octocopter robots” are slightly becoming distinctive features of our lives and, sooner or later, they will be used for surveillance, spying and law enforcement purposes in urban scenarios, in the same way current police helicopters are dispatched over our heads seeking criminals.

At least, being small and light, they will be less dangerous than Predator or Reaper UAVs whose greater freedom in much crowded airspaces is seen as a safety nightmare by many analysts.

In the near future they will also be transformed into deadly war machines: give ’em more endurance and enough payload to carry also a gun (or a mini-gun), and it’s sorted.

Image credit: ATTILA KISBENEDEK/AFP/GettyImages

By the way, the above ‘bot was photographed on May 1, 2012 during a special F1 car show in Budapest organized by Hungaroring Zrt and Vodafone Zrt.

Photo: “Check your six”. You’ve got a quadricopter drone behind you (theaviationist.com)
Unbelievable Aerial Bike Stunts Shot With Nimble DSLR Drone (gizmodo.com.au)

About David Cenciotti

David Cenciotti is a journalist based in Rome, Italy. He is the Founder and Editor of “The Aviationist”, one of the world’s most famous and read military aviation blogs. Since 1996, he has written for major worldwide magazines, including Air Forces Monthly, Combat Aircraft, and many others, covering aviation, defense, war, industry, intelligence, crime and cyberwar. He has reported from the U.S., Europe, Australia and Syria, and flown several combat planes with different air forces. He is a former 2nd Lt. of the Italian Air Force, a private pilot and a graduate in Computer Engineering. He has written five books and contributed to many more ones.