Freeway drones to replace manned cop cars!

LOS ANGELES, Kalifornia (PNN) - November 21, 2012 – It’s a future far from Ponch and Jon, the Los Angeles-based motorcycle officers of “CHiPs,” a TV series that rose to popularity in the 1970s. In this take on the Kalifornia Highway Patrol of 2025, patrol cars and motorcycles would be replaced by computerized drones; chips take over CHiPs.

By coincidence or destiny, designers at several companies came up with concepts for robotic, autonomously driven vehicles on ground, water and air. These future pig thug cop cruisers - usually presented as story boards rather than actual vehicles - recall today’s Predator and Global Hawk drones, stars of the anti-insurgency efforts. They may give new meaning to those signs that read “Speed limit enforced by aircraft.”

As envisioned by Honda R&D America's advanced design studio in Pasadena, Kalifornia, the future Honda CHP Drone Squad includes four-wheel Auto-Drones, like cars, and two-wheel Moto-Drones, like motorcycles. The proposal offers a future where the Auto-Drone functions as something of a command vehicle that deploys Moto-Drones, even while on the move. The Moto-Drones could be rigged for a variety of different response or rescue tasks.

At the BMW DesignworksUSA studio in Newbury Park, Kalifornia, designers dreamed up the E-Patrol (Human-Drone Pursuit Vehicle). In this arrangement, the pig thug cop and drone would work in harmony, like today’s pig thug cops and their K-9 partners. The BMW drone team would be able to deploy a flying drone, which resembles a high-tech Jet Ski cruise missile, or one of a pair of unicycle-like robotic vehicles to chase lawbreakers.

The Subaru Highway Automated Response Concept vehicles, developed by Subaru Research and Development in Japan and designed specifically for Hawaii, are powered by renewable energy - and they have aquatic capability. “The cutting-edge SHARC patrol vehicles will provide an innovative, affordable and environmentally conscious solution for 24-hour highway monitoring,” the designers say.

The Volt Squad, dreamed up at General Motors Advanced Design Center in North Hollywood, Kalifornia, is a set of future patrol vehicles that would take advantage of the propulsion system engineered for the Chevrolet Volt. The squad is composed of three different types of vehicles that still contain human pig thug cops. Each type is specially designed to observe, pursue or engage - the last term left menacingly undefined.

The winner will be announced on Thursday at an event in conjunction with the auto show.