If you are passionate CleanTechnica Reader, you know we cover drones sometimes. They are the most common example of electric aviation today and are displacing manned aircraft on fossil fuels, so it makes sense to be excited about them. But we also need to be realistic about what we can and cannot do with them. They are not a cure for all the world’s problems.
A recent article by the CEO of AXON (formerly known as TASER) and a press release announced that the company wants to make drones with tasers and sell them to police and security. In theory, this sounds like a great idea because it would prevent personal attacks and disable a shooter or other person who threatens without killing. But in practice, this is likely to be an expensive solution in the search for problems that could be more easily solved by other methods.
I went through law enforcement academy (where I was hit by a soyser as part of training to use them), worked full time as a firearms instructor, and I’m an FAA certified drone pilot, so I know a few things about tasers, security, and drones. With this experience in mind, I have several reasons to think that taser drones will not work as well as claimed in the sales show.
Pilots need a lot of training
While anyone can take a short online test and operate a cheap drone with a camera, flying for reasons other than recreation is much more complex. To become a certified distance pilot, you must pass a personal test at an authorized testing facility that covers various areas. Here is just one example of what you will see on such a test:
This is a FAA flight map for the Dallas-Fort Worth subway area. Do you want to pass the FAA test? You need to know how to read this map (or other similar) and answer questions about it. Is it legal to fly to a specific location on a map? What is the danger at a certain distance from a certain point? Where is the airport? What class of airspace is there on earth in this one place?
This is just one skill among many. It is easier than it seems at first glance, but only if you learn to read these maps. And this is just one of the many things you need to learn to pass the test. The FAA estimates that you will need about 20 hours of study to be ready to take the test.
However, obtaining a license is only the first step. You will come not knowing how to actually operate a particular drone, but you will know how not to get into legal trouble. So, if you are hired by the school district or the police department (or the school district police department) to operate one of the future AXON drones, you will also need to undergo training and exercise regularly.
In addition, you will need to know how to use the souser effectively and know in which situations the souser is actually useful. Hollywood makes tasers look like they will reliably knock out someone without permanent damage, but the reality is much bigger. complex and limited by that. So, you will have to learn that too.
Yes, it is true that the FAA does not regulate drone flying indoors, but it is doubtful that law enforcement or security authorities would like to limit their use of expensive taser drones to indoor use only. Therefore, operators will need training and experience.
Maintenance of drones and pilots ready for flight
So you got training, you got a drone (more on that below), you got training for it, and you’re (hopefully) part of a team of other drone pilots who can work when you’re off duty or on vacation. Great.
Now it is better to always have your drone (and spare drones) ready to fly. You will need to have spare batteries and spare for your spare, because you can’t just leave drone batteries turned on 100% all the time (degradation). You will need to inspect and maintain the drone regularly. You will need to make software updates (and these sometimes go wrong). You will also need to maintain an inventory of spare parts, such as propellers.
You will also need to follow up on continuing education both from the FAA and possibly from drone manufacturers.
Just mess up one or two of the above and your drone will not be ready to fly in an emergency. You probably won’t get full-time to operate drones, so hopefully in a hurry to teach, to be a school administrator, a security guard or a police officer, you won’t forget any of that.
Darts don’t always stick
Assuming all of the above is correct, it is likely that the drone taser will continue to fail than Hollywood (or the graphic novel by the director of AXON) would think.
Two things have to go perfectly for the taser to work. Like anything electrical, a taser needs somewhere to get electricity in, and somewhere to get it back. The batteries have two terminals. Electrical plugs in our homes have at least two teeth. So the taser must have two arrows.
Both arrows must come into contact and crash into something that can conduct electricity. Yes, the human body can conduct electricity, but thick clothing, a leather jacket or body armor cannot. If any arrow misses the target or lands somewhere where it cannot conduct current to another arrow (through the target), the taser cannot do anything useful.
After police shootings, people often ask, “Why didn’t they use a souser?” It will go the more likely way to stop the threat, which is usually a gun.
Attaching a taser to a drone, even if that drone has a really good autonomous computer, does not solve these problems with reliability.
This increases serious costs and risk
In order for a school or police department to have a serious non-lethal drone program, they will need at least three pilots to cover all shifts and ensure that someone who can operate drones is present. When you consider that people get sick and want to be free, you will probably need more than 5-6 pilots. They will need training, and that will have to happen in an hour. Continuing education will also have to take place for an hour.
Do you think AI will replace pilots? AXON’s own press release has its own version of Asimov’s three laws of robotics. The first “law” for AXON is: “People must have decisions and remain responsible. Robots must be controlled by authorized human operators who accept legal and moral responsibility for every decision that affects humans. ”
So, you will need trained pilots, even if the law allows autonomous safety drones indoors.
The drones themselves will not be cheap. A professional drone for photography costs from $ 2,000 to hundreds of thousands of dollars, and this will not be a drone with a camera. With the necessary skills and a penchant for corporate America to charge the government a premium, I wouldn’t expect anything cheaper than $ 10,000 per drone. You will need at least two drones per facility, so there is a backup. If you put them in a police car, you will need at least three to make sure there is always one who can show up at the scene because his operator is on shift.
Most alternatives to securing facilities (trained and armed personnel, securing facilities, other security systems) are more reliable and cost less, and given the less than perfect nature of tasers, you will still have to invest in those alternatives no matter what.
What’s worse, if you’re wasting precious seconds and minutes on a drone taser that may or may not work, you could cost lives that could have been saved had you used other resources against the shooter faster, or better yet, prevented them from even they go inside.
There is plenty of room to discuss what is right to do about this problem, but it seems pretty clear to me that trying to rely on taser drones is not a viable option.
Featured image: AXON’s drone taser concept. Photo of AXON.
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