Dingo-
- at least they will be able to have HD pictures of people drowning. This capability is better used for Police Mispers searching.
Much as I used to hate the many, many hours of fruitless searching, a crew of 4 or 5 in a helicopter with all the modern sensors plus the Mk 1 eyeball, is always going to be a more effective search platform.
But of course it's all about cost since the drones will be much cheaper and we can pretend the area has been searched effectively because the computer says so.
Have to agree with you there Crab. So often it is the human brain connected to the Mk1 eyeball that sees something that looks not quite right or sees a flash of movement that gets the attention and leads to a successful rescue. The machine is never going to be able to make those decisions or get that gut feeling that a human crew can. I reckon I do a missing person search on average once a week. Often times the eyeball finds the person where the camera wouldn't.