Drones have dominated the headlines lately, with investigations by the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation into domestic drone use giving headaches to law enforcement all over.
We pored through local news, document releases and company press releases to find out what drones were being sold to police departments for use in the field.
What we found was that law enforcement groups from huge city departments to county sheriffs were all enchanted by the idea of drones.
The market potential is already considered huge. It's expected to grow by a billion dollars between now and 2016.
Here's a look at the latest in drone tech over American skies, and where they're seeing testing or active use.
The Skyseer was one of the first drones designed for police use
The Skyseer was developed to be an extremely lightweight drone with imaging capabilities. It entered police use way back in 2006.
One of the huge advantages and initial selling points of the Skyseer was that it had a low price tag compared to police helicopter use, which ran around $1,000 per hour.
The Skyseer cost around $30,000 for a single unit, but that paid off rather quickly if it was used instead of helicopters.
The Skyseer is also nearly completely collapsible, and beaks down and rolls up to fit in essentially a tube.
California grounded the program, leaving the LA County Sheriff's office in a bind
The main user of the Skyseer was the LA County Sheriff's Office, who used it to experiment with full integration of drones into their police force.
The thing is, when they adopted the drone there weren't any significant regulations from the federal government on use.
Now, the FAA has said that drones for police use — for the time being — cannot go higher than 300 feet, and must stick to other constraints on their abilities.
The innovation in police drones has expanded in an entirely different direction since then.
The Honeywell T-Hawk is military-grade but street legal
The gas-powered T-Hawk is one of the strangest looking drones we've seen, but it's remarkably good at surveillance.
Designed by Honeywell, the 18 pound drone can is vertically launched, so it doesn't need any kind of runway. It can fly for 50 minutes and navigate during even 23 mph winds and rain.
Like most of the drones in domestic use, the T-Hawk beams video down to a ground station. It's got ten flight plans pre-programmed in for quick use.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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