Chatham-Kent police have introduced their latest weapon to fight crime and keep the community safe.
It's a 5 lb , $119,000 drone with an infrared camera that some call "Wally." It has a maximum altitude of 100 m, can work in wind gusts of up to 90 km/hr and temperatures of -20 C to 50 C.
Constable Jason Herder says it can reconstruct a collision scene and find missing persons.
"It starts everything off like a Google earth image. It gets its precise location from the GPS in the bay station and the sky ranger, and then you build your grid and where you want to search in the tablet building your own flight plan," says Herder.
CK police have introduced their first drone. August 03, 2017. (Photo by Paul Pedro)
The drone has been operational for three months and has been deployed 11 times for crashes and other incidents.
The drone cannot operate in freezing rain and doesn't have a radar detector.
Constable Josh Flikweert says it takes two people to operate the drone.
"Even though he can see in the camera, I have to give him an overview. If he's coming up to something, he has to avoid a collision. If there's aircraft in the air, I have to be aware of that and communicate with them or ground the drone if need be," Flikweert says.
Sergeant Mike Pearce says Transport Canada requires the drone to be within sight at all times.
"It is possible that individuals could communicate by radio. So, you could have the operator here and maybe a kilometre away maybe the visual observer could be placed and the two could communicate that way. In that scenario you could have the flyer farther away but we have to see the UAS at all times," says Pearce.
