What innocent times those were when “drone” meant nothing worse than the laziest members of a bee colony. Today, people usually associate it with tracking shots in boring ZDF early evening series, but most often they hear about drones as potential terrorist weapons or think of Russian attacks on Ukraine when they hear the word. Ever smaller, buzzing ever nastier, ever deadlier, they have become the epitome of aggressive precision technology, a new type of UFO – the inescapable flying object.
Before we condemn the drone out of hand, we should take a look at the English county of Warwickshire. The six-month-old dog Bow, a cocker spaniel, recently ran away while walking through a park. Mistress Jodie Dance searched for her for hours until she had to give up when darkness fell. Dance posted a missing person’s report on Facebook, but Bow remained missing for the time being. It wasn’t until five days later that a jogger heard a faint barking coming from an overgrown part of the park.
John Watton was then called in. He works for “Drone Search and Rescue For Lost Dogs”, an association founded for the purpose of finding lost dogs using drones. Drones with thermal imaging cameras are very suitable for search operations in confusing areas, quotes the Daily Mail Watton: “Within a few minutes I recognized a signature,” he reports.
The cocker spaniel was stuck two meters deep in the bushes. A recording of the rescue operation shows Jodie Dance and her friends using hedge trimmers to make their way through dense blackberry bushes and hugging Bow at the end. John Watton admits that he almost cried when he saw it.
Drone pilots crying with emotion, that doesn’t really fit into the picture of the soulless threat from the air. Whether something is a sword or a plowshare depends primarily on its application. This also applies to drones, which Jodie Dance will think of in the future as guardian angels in minicopter form.
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Editor’s note: In an earlier version we used an image that may not have shown a cocker spaniel, but rather a Griffon Petit Vendeen. We exchanged the photo.