Amazon in surveillance drone plan
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Amazon has come up with yet another way to watch us: surveillance drones. The online retail behemoth has received a patent in America for “surveillance as a service”, where a drone would hover over an “authorised” home to take pictures or videos. Amazon has built or bought a raft of products that collect data on people’s homes, from the Ring video doorbell to its Alexa voice assistant. It launched a service last year, called “Neighbors”, that allows Ring users to upload footage of suspicious activity, and has signed dozens of co-operation deals with local law enforcers allowing them access to the videos. |
Unmanned aerial vehicle based surveillance as a service
Inventor(s): YETURU KALIDAS [IN] + (Yeturu, Kalidas) Applicant(s): AMAZON TECH INC [US] +
Abstract of US10322801 (B1) The delivery of a package using an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) may include performing a surveillance action at a property of an authorized party. The surveillance action may include imaging the property, and may be performed before or after the package is delivered. Surveillance data such as image data gathered in a surveillance action may be modified to remove or obscure adjacent properties not associated with the property of the authorized party. Based on surveillance data, the probability or confidence value of a surveillance event may be determined and a surveillance alert may be generated. Surveillance actions may be scheduled by a central controller to ensure that the surveillance action may be performed without exhausting the resources, such as battery power or time, of the UAV. Surveillance actions may be received as an interrupt and may have an associated priority level.
