The Expansion of the Drone
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A Ritewing Zephyr II flies with a GoPro camera mounted on it as it flies over a waterfront park in Berkeley, Calif. Interest in the domestic use of drones is surging among public agencies and private citizens alike, including a thriving subculture of amateur hobbyists, even as the prospect of countless tiny but powerful eyes circling in the skies raises serious privacy concerns.
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Mark Harrison pilots an Arcti Copter 5 drone at a waterfront park in Berkeley, Calif.
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Israeli soldiers prepare to launch a Skylark drone during a drill near Bat Shlomo, Israel. The Skylark can carry a camera payload of just over 2 pounds, has an operational ceiling of 15,000 feet, and allows a team to monitor any designated point within a 9-mile radius.
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A Draganflyer X6 drone during a test flight in Mesa County, Colo. The drone measures about 36 inches from rotor tip to rotor tip and weighs just over 2 pounds. Fitted with infrared cameras, it has been used for search-and-rescue missions, to help find suspects, and to identify hot spots after a major fire.
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An Aeryon Scout unmanned aerial vehicle hovers at the Nome causeway in Nome, Alaska. Researchers used the 2.5-pound, camera-equipped drone to provide a large picture of the ice in hopes of guiding a Nome-bound Russian fuel tanker as close to shore as possible. The drone glides on 20-minute missions ranging from 10 feet to 320 feet, and its images can be instantly viewed on a tablet-type computer screen.
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This photo released by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard claims to show a U.S. RQ-170 Sentinel drone that Tehran says its forces downed.
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A Predator B unmanned aircraft lands after a mission at the Naval Air Station in Corpus Christi, Texas. U.S. Customs and Border Protection is expanding its use of drones outfitted with powerful infrared cameras and sensitive radar to patrol U.S. borders.
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A Pakistani villager holds the wreckage of a suspected surveillance drone that crashed in Chaman, a town along the border with Afghanistan.
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The flight pattern of the new one-winged drone at Lockheed Martin Advance Technology Laboratories in Southampton, N.J., is based on the flight of maple seeds pods that twirl down from the trees during the spring.
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Phil Groves, a senior fishery biologist with Idaho Power Co., uses a drone helicopter as a safer, more affordable way to count fish nests. After a helicopter crash killed two fellow researchers and a pilot, Idaho Power invested about $16,000 in small, maneuverable, remote-controlled aircraft from Germany called Hexakopters.
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Matt Keennon, program director at AeroVironment, demonstrates the Nano Hummingbird at the company's facility in Simi Valley, Calif. With a 6.5-inch wingspan, the remote-controlled drone weighs less than an AA battery and can fly at speeds of up to 11 mph.
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The Navy X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System Demonstration aircraft successfully completes its first flight at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., marking a critical step in building a tail-less, fighter-sized drone that can take off from and land on a U.S. aircraft carrier.
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One of three Harfang drones of the French army at the U.S. airbase in Bagram, Afghanistan.
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An Indian Navy Heron, an Israeli-made, unmanned aerial vehicle, flies over Porbandar Airport in Gujarat province.
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Pfc. Joseph Robinson of Eugene, Ore., launches a Raven, an unmanned reconnaissance drone, at Combat Outpost Senjeray, Kandahar province, Afghanistan.
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A man uses an iPad to control an AR.Drone designed by the company Parrot during the press preview day of the International Toy Fair Nuernberg in Nuremberg, Germany. The "quadricopter" can also be controlled with an iPhone.
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A view of the pilot's seating area in the flight operations room for the Global Hawk weather reconnaissance drone at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center on Edwards Air Force Base in California.
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An unmanned U.S. Predator drone flies over Kandahar Air Field, southern Afghanistan.
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