Autonomous drones could’ve helped contain riots in Singapore and Thailand

In the past few weeks, the world had its eyes on Southeast Asia as Thailand and Singapore were engulfed in riots. In Thailand, tens of thousands of anti-government protesters demanded the resignation of the Thai Prime Minister. In Singapore, foreign workers flipped over vehicles in anger over an Indian National who was killed by a bus. The crowd swelled to 400 at one point.

The mayhem wasn’t restricted to the streets. Social media was caught in a frenzy, spreading rumors involving the riots which turned out to be false. Video footages of the events went viral.

Amidst the noise however, a set of stunning videos surfaced online, giving a top-down view of the riots in Thailand. The footage was taken by an autonomous drone, which buzzed like a bee as it hovered over the streets of Bangkok.

A question naturally arises: could autonomous aerial drones, which maneuver on its own based on a set of programmable instructions given beforehand, have mitigated the riots that occurred in Thailand and Singapore?

More than killing machines

In recent years, drones have been occupying the airwaves. The United States has used them to hunt down terrorists in Central Asia, in the process angering denizens for violating national sovereignty and killing innocents along with military targets.

But it’s only recently that robots have been dominating the news for more benign purposes, such as delivering parcels, conducting surveillance, and driving cars. While these machines are still in the trial stages, there’s a real chance that they could become as common as delivery vans by the end of the decade.

They could even be utilized by police forces and firefighters, and several Asian companies are figuring that out. One of them is Garuda Robotics, a Singapore-based startup that is engaging potential customers for live trials in 2014 (the company won Tech in Asia’s Startup Arena contest in Jakarta this year).

Pulkit Jaiswal, the company’s 20-year-old founder, believes drones can act as advance scouts that provide intelligence to first responders before they arrive on the scene.

These machines can be mounted onto a fire truck and automatically deploy when the vehicle is en route to the emergency site. They could then feed live data back to the vehicle and central command, allowing firefighters to adjust their plans and prepare themselves for what is to come. Pulkit adds:

If it turns out that entering the scene now looks like pure suicide, then the firefighters can make the call to hold and wait for backup.

Since every second counts, first responders are forced to make snap decisions. Additional intelligence from the drones can complement human intuition, boost confidence, reduce human error, and save lives.

More than hardware