Gadgetory

under the Christmas tree in the deadly skies over Afghanistan soon perhaps replacing traffic helicopters unmanned aerial drones are showing up everywhere a combination of technological advancement and necessity has led to the creation of military-grade unmanned flying vehicles all most affordable toy grade quad copters and a growing commercial hobbyist industry in between to build new increasingly cheap and increasingly smart robotic flying vehicles of course we're all familiar with the stories of remote-controlled drone airplanes that perform reconnaissance and increasingly carry lethal weapons for our armed forces these drones are primarily remote-controlled but many have a measure of smarts that enables them to fly parts of their missions with complete autonomy how smart can flying robots get just ask your neighbor the geek he or she may be one of the tens of thousands of community members of DIY drones working on improving the state of the art of the autonomous aerial drone using open-source hardware like the arduino microcontroller and the quadcopter architecture that's becoming ubiquitous what are the privacy and legal implications of a world in which governments businesses and private citizens can buy or build smart and perhaps silent reconnaissance vehicles welcome to the future it's being built today you