“For us, it’s a way we can touch our community like we never have before”
… By deploying driverless cruisers?
Seems more like a marketing stunt. Emphasis by me:
The PUG will eventually be allowed to drive the streets of Miami-Dade unmanned after a healthy amount of community feedback, the sheriff said. But a deputy will be in the front seat as the vehicle drives itself — for at least the first year.
It is a (not really) autonomous vehicle that serves as a launchpad for a drone, which is the thing that does the reconnaissance.
Like they could just put drones on regular vehicles, but they want to pretend it is something more than that.
This isn’t from ford, they mention in the video is donated by another company
The electronics might now be from Ford but that vehicle is a Ford Explorer, and probably none with the police package. Ford sells a police package explorer to several police departments in the US.
It is a safe guess that nobody has self driving Fords more advanced than Ford.
Yes. That’s what I meant. I’d bet this “Policing Lab” is closer to MTV’s Pimp my Ride with Xzibit, than a research institute outperforming Ford at their own cars with cutting-edge research on Lidar, sensor fusion and custom AI training… They likely have someone who does the vinyl on the car, someone who cuts a hole in the roof so the drone can be deployed and an electrician to wire everything to 2 computers and 3 smartphones. Only difference they don’t install a whirlpool and a sound system in the back. Okay, there has to be a bit more to this story, but they omit all the interesting (technical) details, I wonder why…
Edit: And reading their website makes me reconsider what I just said. Seems they have some other surveillance tech to sell and embedded and AI assistance and optimization. Could be a marketing campaign to sell the other stuff. And they themselves don’t write a lot about self-driving. From what I gather on their website, the car is supposed to sit somewhere, as deterrence, and provide a live video-feed and scan license plates. That’s what it does autonomously, not really drive on its own. And then there’s the drone on top and the entire car can be used as an intercom.
Sometimes destruction of property is a civic duty
Nothing that a can of paint or a bucket of tar couldn’t fix.
Throw and run … and the local department would have to spend an hour locating the vehicle to get people to it, then a few hours more towing it back, then days more to clean it up.
In my experience, they might not clean their own vehicles. They get people serving community service hours for petty crimes to do it for them.
Or so I’m told.
We had to to clean and detail courthouse workers’ (judges, DA, etc) personal vehicles for community service as children.
I know for a fact one of the cities in my area uses the people who are in the city jail for unpaid fines. They get $50 off their fine… by doing all the labor of the jail, like washing the floor, cooking the food, and yes, washing the cop cars.
Indentured servitude. Nice!
Got to love how the 13th amendment made an exception for prisoners.
Cleanup is absolutely a time burn, but let’s also be real; they’ll go straight to it via GPS tracking and unless you get the windshield real good, someone will just get in and manual drive it back to the station.
True … but it might be time to figure out a liquid combination that stains or is slightly corrosive. You don’t need to melt things, just corrosive enough to etch, mar or deform glass or plastics of sensor lenses.
You clean everything up but realize that the liquid has permanently damaged an imaging lens cover, either with deep stains or corrosion.
Then you replace it but then it costs money and time.
And you do it over and over again
Hydrofluoric acid is really good at etching glass.
But it’s also really good at eating your bones.
Craft stores sell glad etching cream that will absolutely do this (to the types of glass I’ve used it on). Unless there is some super specific chemistry to windshield glass, a jar of that should work.
Contain a small amount and seal it inside a glass ball or cylinder … use a slingshot to throw it
I was thinking paintballs ;)
Termite is pretty easy to make and should do the…ok, pretty much every job
It had a drone attached to it, that would follow you and record you as you run
You’re just wasting tax payer dollars, unfortunately
No. You’re spending tax payer dollars to send a message that the tax payers didn’t want their dollars spent on unmanned police surveillance.
It’s just disgusting they have the money for this.
Video said it was donated by the company that made it, not that that’s better. Next step autonomous officers donated by Totally Not Killbots LLC
Oh. No… nononono… this shit ain’t right. That bullshit ain’t gonna fly for long… AI controlled police cruisers??? Fuck that! Im not anything like an activist/protester but id set fire to one of those.
There’s probably a load of expensive stuff there waiting to be stolen.
It’s Florida. They suck Cop’s dicks and ❤️ Trump.
It’ll be Robocop there before you know it.
Miami - Dade Metro is rife with corruption.
Came here for this. Lemmy does not disappoint
This is also the state were they legalized running over protesters with your car, so maybe they just want this so that they can stop giving the cops PTSD.
This bad boy can do all the civilian striking on aidewalks for you and you dont even have to borher fixing the autonomous part.Finally, hiding in shrubbery will be a thing of the past for the criminal underbrush.
So its a police car driving around. What if someone actually needs help? What can just a car do?
This whole idea is so utterly stupid, I’m at loss of words.
It can’t do anything to help anyone, but it’s essentially a mobile Flock camera with license plate tracking and facial recognition. It’s a privacy nightmare, and a massive legal liability for the city (Benn Jordan has an excellent video on his YouTube about Flock cameras and how bad they are). Best case scenario is it drives through a deep puddle during the next hurricane and shorts itself out.
I agree. I know your post was serious but I couldn’t help thinking of that green goblin truck from that Stephen King movie where tech comes alive. I’m imagine a police car watching a crime in progress and revving it’s engine to intimate them.
that Stephen King movie where tech comes alive.
Maximum Overdrive.
That’s the one! Thank you
I was waiting the whole video for them to explain even one actually useful aspect of this idea, and at the very end a cop says “it can deploy a drone.”
It’ll run them over! Obviously. Easiesy way to solve any problem is to just run them all over.
@PugJesus can claim to be their messiah and stop them being evil!
Miami. Fucking Miami.
As a Miamian, yes Fucking Miami.
- “Fully autonomous”. Sure it is.
- “We can touch our community in ways we have never done before.” I’m sure the community will feel especially touched and not at all intimidated by multiton robots rolling through their neighborhoods instead of, I dunno, actual people.
- I’m certain that when one of these maims someone, everyone will run to the head of the line to take responsibility and handle the situation with thoughtfulness and care.
By touch they mean surveillance
Neither of which is good. I don’t want the police touching me or surveilling me.
So you can send the car in and it will deploy a drone eh
How about you just deploy a drone
