REVISED
By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON September 13, 2012 Earlier this week the Halton Regional Police got to play with their newest toy – what you and I would call a model airplane with a small engine in it. Others might call the thing a drone. The police called it a UAV – Unmanned Aerial Vehicle which they use to identify illegal outdoor marijuana grow locations.
Members of the Drug and Morality Unit, Guns and Gangs Unit assisted by members of the Forensic Identification Services conducted an outdoor marihuana eradication initiative and found 744 plants in north Milton and Halton Hills. The police estimated street value of the cannabis marihuana seized at $744,000, which would value each plant at $1000 Someone is fibbing here.
Shortly after publishing the story we got a note from an Ontario based company who pointed out to us that they made the UAV. They said: “Reaching out to draw your attention to the fact that the small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) used by Halton police was actually a Canadian-made local product – the Aeryon Scout sUAS – rather than US product shown in the story.”
We used the only picture we could find to illustrate the story we ran.
Odd that the Halton Regional Police made no mention that the product they use was made in the province.
The Aeryon Scout, made by a Waterloo firm that is a recognized leader in the development and commercialization of small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)
Aeryon Labs Inc. was founded in 2007 and is located in Waterloo, Ontario, part of Canada’s Technology Triangle. A recognized leader in the development and commercialization of small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) systems, Aeryon Labs is the trusted partner of civil and military customers, resellers, other commercial business partners around the globe.
The Aeryon team has developed the Aeryon Scout, an easy-to-use, battery powered, unmanned aerial intelligence gathering system. The Scout can be flown by anyone with only a few minutes of training due to its simple point-and-click navigation and camera control systems. Fully stabilized and weather-sealed, the Scout can fly anywhere, anytime in the most demanding weather and wind conditions – when other systems simply cannot fly.
The Aeryon labs team brings together engineers with experience from a broad range of fields, including computer and electrical engineering, video processing, digital video compression, telecommunications, mechanical and mechatronic system design and software development. Our team has the strength of numerous post-graduate degrees in robotics and image compression and brings significant experience from leading global organizations such as LSI, Cisco, Raytheon, RIM and L3-Wescam.
The Aeryon Scout was used by the Libyan Free Forces during the removal of the Gadhafi government.
Investigators remind the public to utilize Crime Stoppers to report any illegal drug, gang or gun activity at 1 800 222-TIPS(8477), through the web at www.haltoncrimestoppers.com or by texting “Tip201” with your message to 274637(crimes).
I’ve always found it amusing to read law enforcement officials’ valuations of street drugs. They’re always vastly overblown, to serve their own PR ends. (Doubtless also a bid to rationalize the $100K price tag on this gizmo; see https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-magazine/waterloo-firms-drones-are-the-new-eye-in-the-sky/article548490) Incidentally, these drones are utterly useless when it comes to hydroponic grow ops, or the drug labs and human smuggling rings that we’ve seen uncovered in the Halton suburbs in recent years. I wonder how much the region is putting toward those little problems?