'Technology is advancing so rapidly': RCMP receives drone training

Drones are starting to be used more often by police in P.E.I. as another set of eyes in the sky.

The RCMP now has four of theunmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs.

"Technology has made some great advances over the last two or three years and the cost has come down significantly," said Staff Sgt. Kevin Baillie.

"They're all commercial products that someone can buy at any electronics store, three of the drones cost approximately $1,500 each, and the other is around $2,500."

'It enhances our safety'

Four officers from three districts received an week-long course on how tomanoeuvredrones to carry out high-altitude detection, mid-air hovering and communications setup.

The drones are used forcollision reconstruction, emergency response calls, major crime investigations and search and rescue.

"We definitely now have the ability to approach scenes, people, structures without physically having to send anybody in," explained Const. Al Vincent, one the four trained officers.

"There are other types of tools like robots out there that are ground-based that have limitations. In this particular case, we can actually go and observe a scene, go and look for someone, look at someone or look for something without being anywhere near it, so from our perspective it enhances our safety and at the same time public safety as well."

'Seeing things that you had no idea was there'

Each dronecan be flown as much as a kilometre away, and Vincent said it gives the operator the ability to get real-time, high-quality digital photographs and video from a different perspective.

"The technology is advancing so rapidly. We have decent screens in front of us that allows us to view in real-time exactly what the UAV is seeing and recording, and then it's amplified that much more when we go back to a base station to a monitor."

'They're much easier to fly'

A drone'saltitude is capped at 500 feet, and Baillie said it's not used solely for surveillance.

"Your imagination is the limit for what we can use these type of things for," Baillie said.

"Certainly one of the things we can use them for is the search for lost people.There's been a lot of advances in the technology, they're much easier to fly, the battery life is much longer than it used to be, they're a very useful tool."

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