Samsung Surveillance System Uses Tower-Tethered Drones

Today, if you want to keep an eye on a large area such as a parking lot, your only solution is tower-mounted surveillance cameras. Some of these cameras can swivel, some are fixed. There will always be surveillance blind spots unless an extraordinary amount of money is spent (some may say ‘invested’) on equipment.

Samsung Techwin has a proposed solution: the cameras are actually drones. They are parked on the tops of surveillance towers, keeping an eye on things. If there is suspicious activity in a blind spot, Security can simply send a drone from atop a tower and go ‘take a look’. Considering the short lifespan of a typical Li-Po battery, the drone will have to return to its tower perch for sustenance, and there is an elaborate docking procedure to make sure the battery is reconnected and recharged for next flight.

Here is Claim 1: A surveillance system comprising:

• a control tower configured to be coupled with and separated from a flying vehicle, and receive an image captured by the flying vehicle through a first communication network, wherein the control tower is further configured to transmit the received image to a central control station through a second communication network for analysis of the received image.

Title: “SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM AND SURVEILLANCE METHOD”

US Patent Application Publication No: 20150158598

Filed (Korea): December 11, 2013

Published: June 11, 2015