By Sanskriti Pandey:
The Rise of the Drones. Sound like a sci-fi movie plot? Actually, it’s real and it could be happening. The world’s highest resolution camera now lies fixed on a feature-loaded surveillance drone called ARGUS. The Pentagon’s research wing, along with a contractor called BAE Systems has made a camera with 1.8 billion pixels – that’s 368 imaging systems from regular smartphone cameras, and sensory capabilities equivalent to a 100 predator drones covering a city!
The Autonomous Real-Time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance Imaging System (ARGUS) can identify and track movements from more than 17,500 feet. It can discern things down to what people are wearing. In terms of features, “you can go back and say ‘I would like to know what happened at this particular location three days, two hours, four minutes ago’ and it would actually show you what happened as if you were watching it live,” Antonaides of BAE Systems explains in this video.
With such enormous capabilities at the mercy of the US government, surveillance has just touched new skies. Watch this video to know what the ARGUS can do, and tell us your thoughts on this technological advance in the comments section.
