At CES yesterday Alarm.com revealed that it is developing a smart home security drone alongside its other IoT devices and software.
The subscription-based home security provider is partnering with Qualcomm to develop camera-equipped home security drones that can automatically investigate unexpected noises and activity.
The idea is that if you hear something go bump in the night, you can just grab your smartphone and watch a live video stream of what’s happening because your drone has automatically gone to check things out.
Lots of companies offer drones or drone-based services that can monitor the perimeter of a home or commercial site from on high. But most aren’t building them to fly indoors.
Alarm.com is developing a system that enables drones to fly wherever unusual people or activities are detected, inside or outdoors, according to Chief Product Officer Dan Kerzner.
The company has begun development of both software and hardware, specifically a quadcopter, using Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Flight platform. But it hasn’t yet finalized a name for its product.
Rather than constantly patrolling a home, the Alarm.com drones will only respond and fly when another system is triggered, for example a motion sensor that’s attached to the lights.
Using some data from other smart home devices, the drones will know where to go investigate and record or live stream a video to a user’s mobile phone. When they fly, they will use cameras and other on-board sensors to see around a room and avoid collisions.
Kerzner declined to get into great detail about each drone component, as the product is only in its fledgling design stages. But he emphasized that using Qualcomm Snapdragon Flight will give the drones the ability to do indoor and outdoor navigation from the start.
Alarm.com is targeting a launch for their drone service at the end of 2017.
At CES, the company also officially launched something it quietly released a few months ago, called the Insights Engine.
Insights Engine is software that enables smart home devices of any kind, including drones in the future, to automatically learn what’s normal in and around a home or work site, and send alerts to users when there’s an intrusion or weird activity, with no manual rule writing required.
Alarm.com is building drones to monitor your home inside and out
http://www.alarm.com/about/press/PressGeneric.aspx?cmid=410
https://www.cnet.com/news/at-ces-flying-drones-are-alarm-com-home-security-moonshot-ces-2017/
Certainly it is a smart application of the drones but I have some doubts about it:
– does it offer something more than traditional vigilance systems?
– is it more expensive or cheaper than traditional vigilance systems?
And, in the end, the biggest question: will it really recognize real issues? I mean, will it work well? Because in these cases you have the risk that technology doesn’t recognize real issues or that consider an issue something that is not.
Another important factor to consider is: are people ready to this? Because as every technological product there is the problem about informations management.
Honestly, I think it is just to have a cooler vigilance service, to tell people “I have drones to oversee my home” and for this the idea will be successful because people love to have this kind of products since that are “different”, “futuristic” and “cool”. But before launching the product the company must reassure people that their sensitive data is well protected.
I really like this idea, and if the price is not going to be be too high, much higher than traditional monitoring systems, and there will be no software problems, I think it can be sucessful around the security market. I am not sure about Polish one, but in case of the US it can work.
I really like the idea. For me it’s like having the typical “Be careful of the dog” sign, but still better because it discourages malicious people from entering the house because they know they are being watched.
In the other hand, I join Enrico about the price and the efficiency. Because if it’s less efficient than traditionnal vigilance systems it sounds more than the new hype gadget to have.