Police Drone Operations
We noticed Police drone operators conducting an operation in a quiet residential side street and lent them an evaluation set of our latest Knight Pod safety beacons so that they could place an illuminated cordon around their area of operation.
As well as helping provide a visual warning around the landing zone, the Knight Pods also gave the operator a visual point of reference from the drone’s perspective, as it can be difficult to distinguish one road from another in the hours of darkness when flying the drone manually back to base (so the officer told us). Positioning the safety beacons with their sequential flash functionality provided the drone pilot both a visual reference from the drones perspective as well as creating an illuminated police exclusion zone.
A quiet cul-de-sac obviously chosen for its suitability for such a police drone operation, still had some light residential traffic, the Pods gave a visual cordon that helped prevent a rather expensive drone inadvertently getting driven over (although it must be said that the police retrieved the drone as soon as it landed!).
The Knight Pods with their very low profile and robust nature do not have to be moved or retrieved to allow vehicle access, an important efficiency gain as this gives officers more time to focus on the job than having to continually move more venerable police lamps or beacons that are simply too fragile or bulky to risk been driven over.
As it happened one SUV, when waved through drove over a Knight Pod, apart from leaving tyre marks on our nice new evaluation kit it didn’t break it or effect performance with a police officer commenting ‘That was a good test’.
The enhanced LED lens covering and top mounted LED’s which are all part of the aerial enhancements incorporated into this new design gave excellent results and the officers were able to share some of the drone footage they captured of the drone coming in to land.
With three colour options (blue, red, amber) the police were able to switch between light patterns to get the best visual reference from the drone’s perspective, interestingly the longer wave length of the amber light output was most discernible at distance in a residential well light environment (although all three showed up clearly at the relatively close distances drone operations are conducted at).
As the Knight Pods also have a setting for all three colours to operate in sequence there’s a lot of versatility built into such a small package – drone operations are just one application but obviously you can create zones, identify command posts and use them as traditional police beacons.
A hats off to the Police as well, their professionalism and approach to community policing with curious residents (particularly children) was exceptional!