Let’s face it. If you believe that Amazon can realise the awesomeness that is drone delivery, you should halfway fear a future of an overbearing police drone force monitoring us. That terrifying totalitarian future might not be as promising as Amazon’s vision for drones but what does that matter to an obsessive government? They’d just abuse drones as a pervasive eye in the sky, all in the name of security.
Spotted by Laughing Squid, Alex Cornell created this vision of the future of security drones in his short Our Drone Future. Cornell used footage shot with DJI Phantom drones of San Francisco and then superimposed security graphics to create a storyline of what the police drones would look like, what the drones would monitor in a city and what terrifying things they would be capable of. It’s not pleasant.
Cornell explains:
In the near future, cities use semi-autonomous drones for urban security. Human officers monitor drone feeds remotely, and data reports are displayed with a detailed HUD and communicated via a simulated human voice (designed to mitigate discomfort with sentient drone technology). While the drones operate independently, they are “guided” by the human monitors, who can suggest alternate mission plans and ask questions.
There’s predictive technology at play here too, which adds to the terrifying bits but yeah, this won’t end well.