Domestic Drones on Patrol

To the pilot’s right, a sensor operator was aiming a camera on the plane to pan, tilt and zoom in a search among the houses on the ground for people who had been reported missing.

On his screen, cartoonlike human figures appeared in a gathering around a camp fire between the houses.

“There they are,” Andrew Regenhard, the pilot and a student, said in a flat tone that seemed out of place with a successful rescue mission.

In fact, no one was missing; the entire exercise used imaginary props and locales. Mr. Regenhard was taking part in a training session at the University of North Dakota. The first to offer a degree program in unmanned aviation, the university is one of many academic settings, along with companies and individuals, preparing for a brave new world in which cheap remote-controlled airplanes will be ubiquitous in civilian air space, searching for everything from the most wanted of criminal suspects to a swarm of grasshoppers devouring a crop.

“The sky’s going to be dark with these things,” said Chris Anderson, the former editor of Wired, who started the hobbyist Web site DIY Drones and now runs a company, 3D Robotics, that sells unmanned aerial vehicles and equipment. He says it is selling about as many drones every calendar quarter — about 7,500 — as the United States military flies in total.

The burst of activity in remotely operated planes stems from the confluence of two factors: electronics and communications gear has become dirt cheap, enabling the conversion of hobbyist radio-controlled planes into sophisticated platforms for surveillance, and the Federal Aviation Administration has been ordered by Congress to work out a way to integrate these aircraft into the national airspace by 2015.

The rapidly expanding market has not gone unnoticed by lawmakers and privacy watchdogs. On Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on the privacy implications of drones like the ones being developed at Grand Forks.

Senator Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the committee, said this year: “This fast-emerging technology is cheap and could pose a significant threat to the privacy and civil liberties of millions of Americans. It is another example of a fast-changing policy area on which we need to focus to make sure that modern technology is not used to erode Americans’ right to privacy.”

Some fans of the technology wince at the word “drone,” which implies that there is no pilot. And they have grown resentful about the alarms raised over privacy issues, noting that a few city and state governments have begun banning drones even where they do not yet operate.

Tom K. Kenville, chairman of the North Dakota chapter of the trade association, Unmanned Applications Institute, International, said such bans would discourage technological progress. “I don’t think we had rules for the road before we had roads,” he said.

Back in the university lab, Rico Becker, a software developer with Corsair Engineering, which had written a program for the students, emphasized that the “missing persons” exercise was just one of many hypothetical missions that students would fly, and was purely theoretical. “We’re not training pilots to spot people camping in their backyards,” he said.

Aside from the missing persons mission, experts here outline a number of uses for the planes: “precision agriculture,” with tiny planes inspecting crops several times a week for the first sign of blight or insect invasion; safety missions by semiautonomous flying machines that could cruise the two-mile length of a freight train and examine the air brakes on each car, far faster than a person could, and be available for accident assessment in case of derailment; inspection operations of pipelines or power lines, a job that is notoriously dangerous for helicopters, and scouting out fires or car crashes.

Volunteer fire departments in places like Grand Forks, Mr. Kenville said, would provide a clear market. An unmanned vehicle, he said, was “going to beat all the cars there,” to determine the scope of a problem.

“If it’s a chemical fire, it will tell us to stay away, or it’s just some hay bales, drive slower,” he said.

Remote control equipment might even displace some human pilots, in the cockpits of cargo planes.

Larry Johnson — Charged with Felony Domestic Violence

Larry Johnson
Charged
Felony Domestic Violence
Former NFL star Larry Johnson has been charged with felony domestic violence after allegedly strangling an ex-gf in Vegas last week, TMZ has learned.

According to the Clark County D.A., Larry was charged with one count of felony domestic battery stemming from the incident.

He faces a max of 5 years in prison and a $15,000 fine. FYI -- the fine for non-strangulation felony domestic battery is only $10,000.

As we previously reported, 32-year-old Johnson -- who once signed a $45 million contract with the Kansas City Chiefs -- was arrested last week for the alleged attack inside the Bellagio hotel.

Johnson has denied the allegations.

Lindsay Lohan and Dina in Huge Domestic Fight — 911 Called

Lindsay Lohan, Dina
HUGE FIGHT
911 CALLED
7:08 AM PDT  Sources close to Lindsay tell TMZ ... Dina was "wasted" at the nightclub.  We're told the fight started when Lindsay wanted to take her limo to her NYC hotel, but Dina wanted to take it to her home in Long Island, to avoid paying for a taxi.  Somehow Dina prevailed, over the intense protests of her daughter.   We're told Dina scratched Lindsay's leg in the process.

6:26 AM PDT -- Law enforcement sources tell TMZ ... cops took a Domestic Incident Report but no arrests were made.

6:11AM PDT --  We're told the 911 call was a domestic violence call.  Sources say in one of the 911 calls to cops ... the caller said Lindsay was being held against her will by Dina and the driver.


Lindsay Lohan and mama Dina were in a blowout, violent fight early this morning, that ended in a 911 call with cops rushing to the scene ... TMZ has learned.

It started last night when the duo went to a nightclub in New York City.  Our photog says they left the club at around 4 AM and headed back to Dina's home in Long Island.

Lindsay and Dina started arguing in the car and it escalated when they got home.  We're told it became physical with Lindsay sustaining a cut on her leg.  We're also told there was property damage -- including a broken bracelet of Lindsay's -- that occurred during the scuffle.

Cops are still on scene. 

The pic below (Lindsay with a random clubgoer) was taken before the fight started ... at Electric Room, the nightclub inside the Dream Downtown -- the hotel where Lindsay allegedly hit a dude while pulling into the garage.