Connecticut suburb releases ‘pandemic drones’ to try to enforce social distancing

Imposing social distancing during the continuous novel coronavirus pandemic is a hard thing to do, but the rural town of Westport, Connecticut, may have found the most over-the-top service yet: releasing specialized police drones to yell at people who aren’t standing six feet apart, as spotted by Gizmodo

In a post on Facebook announcing the brand-new drone program, the Westport Police Department notes that the drones will not be utilized on citizen’s private yards, nor will they be using facial acknowledgment technology. Still, it’s tough not to envision possible personal privacy concerns for drones that are flying around and keeping an eye on people’s physical places.

” The goal to supply much better health tracking assistance for potential at-risk groups, consisting of seniors, as well as for gathering crowds at beaches, train stations, parks and entertainment areas, and shopping. It will not be utilized in individual personal yards, nor does it utilize facial recognition technology,” the department’s post checks out.

The business behind the drones, Draganfly, is making some quite big claims about what it can do, saying that the “pandemic drone” utilizes “specialized sensing unit and computer system vision systems” in order to track people with fevers or heats, heart and respiratory rates, individuals sneezing and coughing in crowds, and big groups of individuals congregating. Draganfly also claims that its drone can spot “transmittable conditions from a distance of 190 feet.”

It’s not clear how accurate any of those measurement claims are– Draganfly does not make any diagnostic claims in its press release, noting that the goal of the program is to assist track broader patterns for cities or towns– nor does Westport PD discuss how it will use this data to help battle the spread of the infection.

However alongside those larger claims is a much more simple function: determining when people are less than six feet part and informing them to practice much better social distancing. It’s something that we have actually already seen civilians finish with drones, as seen in New York City previously in April when a self-proclaimed “volunteer drone task force” flew a drone in a park that advised individuals to appropriately social distance.

While drones may appear like an outrageous way to ask people to stop congregating, it’s not totally absurd, given that the remote nature of the technology implies that officers don’t need to directly break up crowds and potentially risk infection themselves.