LA Testing Aerial Surveillance

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department is testing the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles to patrol the sky over LA. The vehicle, called SkySeer, is built by Octatron Inc., and apparently obscure company from St. Petersburg FL.

The vehicle can autonomously navigate using GPS waypoints or be wireless controlled via a ground station. It has a 6.5" wingspan and weighs a mere 3.125 lbs. It can fly for almost an hour at 25 mph. It has a pan tilt camera on board.

The LA Sheriff's office hopes such a vehicle will help them with rooftop escapers, locating missing persons, forrest fires, and many other jobs which normally require a helicopter. At $25,000 each, the SkySeer, is far cheaper than a $5 million dollar helicopter.

Here is a Flickr photopool that contains more pictures of the SkySeer. There more information and pictures in this article on BoingBoing.