It’s pretty crazy how Amazon continues to find more and more weird ways to make our lives easier. You had me at free two-day shipping, Amazon. You don’t need to get all fancy to impress me, but I appreciate the effort.
… the latest of which is a patent that was announced Tuesday, being referred to by GeekWire as “Alexa in a drone” but, more specifically, “the cop of the future.” To clarify, this is NOT RoboCop.
Simply put, Amazon is bringing its personal assistant Alexa’s digital brain technology and bringing it to some really useful areas, namely law enforcement.
The technology is designed to control drones small enough to fit in someone’s pocket and capable of locating lost items, cars and people, among many other things. Amazon’s patent describes drones that hover above a traffic stop to provide a better vantage point, since the traditional method -- dash cams -- can be obscured in some situations.
An officer could also use a drone to go after multiple suspects at the same time, telling it to follow one while the officer pursues another. This technology could also be used by law enforcement in a missing person case, or to help someone find a child who wandered off, according to the patent filing. These drones could even scan license plates and run backgrounds on those.
And for those of you who were hoping that this would be more of a RoboCop-themed story? Let me throw you a bone. The Daily Mail is reporting that a droid fitted with face-recognition technology will soon be patrolling the streets of Dubai.