Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu has decided to acquire 10 Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) or Drones to be deployed for a variety of police and civilian applications to conduct surveillance of various incidents, events and on-going activities.
These drones will used especially for crime control, crowd control and continuous monitoring of dharnas, riots, strikes, raasta rokos, religious processions and also for routine use of traffic control, disaster management, tracking and training of the movements of drug smugglers, red sanders smugglers and other contraband goods besides using new technologies for tracing the missing persons.
The Chief Minister took the decision after the demo of various types of drones used for civilian purposes was shown to DGP J.V. Ramudu and Advisor Dr. Gandhi P.C. Kaza.
These cameras will be used across the state for obtaining panoramic views of crowds gathered at key areas and to keep watch on impending natural calamities such as floods, cyclones and other natural disasters besides also using them for agriculture crop management, water management, making use of image enhancement technology for image processing of vast tracks of land to distinguish the healthy and defective crops for timely harvesting purpose.
The police applications include use of advanced software for facial recognition and identification of known offenders from out of the video footage available from the public places obtained through CCTV cameras and Drone cameras fitted with high-resolution infrared cameras, thermal cameras capable of distinguishing the faces out of the database of such known offenders. It is also proposed to make use of this technology for the location of lost or abandoned vehicles, goods, missing persons and other unattended materials coming under its purview.
Both the tethered and untethered systems which are capable of carrying the latest cameras with an endurance of remaining in the air up to one hour flying at an altitude of 100 m and above covering a radius up to 5 km. It is expected that use of this high technology UAVs will bring down crime, reduce road accidents and improve traffic flow and steep reduction in the organized crime involving smuggling of valuable forest and other natural resources of the state. (INN)