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CUPID Intercept Drone Like Niven's Copseye
The CUPID (Chaotic Unmanned Personal Intercept Drone) is a prototype device designed by Chaotic Moon's co-founder William Hurley; take a look at this demonstration firing in SXSW in Austin, Texas.
(Video of Chaotic Unmanned Personal Intercept Drone (Cupid))
The drone is called cupid CUPID, a Tarot hexacopter equipped with an 80,000-volt stun gun. (Most police-issue Tasers top out at 50,000.)Whurley has a whole plan about how CUPID might actually function in the world. If you were protecting a set property against intruders, for instance, it would be easy to have CUPID approach anyone who crosses a certain threshold and beam a picture back to the property owner. If the property owner doesn't authorize the intruder, it would be easy to have speakers on the drone issue a stock warning and, if the intruder doesn't comply, alert the authorities and tase them into submission until the police arrive. This goes way beyond the demo we saw, but Whurley insists it could be done with only minimal changes to the device we saw.
Larry Niven visualized this device (he called them "copsyes") from his 1972 story Cloak of Anarchy:
Someone at police headquarters had expected that. Twice the usual number of copseyes floated overhead, waiting. Gold dots against blue, basketball-sized, twelve feet up. Each a television eye and a sonic stunner, each a hookup to police headquarters, they were there to enforce the law of the Park.
(Read more about Niven's copseyes)
Via Metro and Chaotic Moon.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 3/9/2014)
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