We’ve conceptualized home security drones for some time with autonomous programming that instructs the drones to return to a charging station when their batteries become depleted. Feed the video back to a platform that knows what the area should look like and alert on abnormalities.

The idea of a drone patrol is interesting to me because optimizing the ‘random walk’ algorithm to best suit the implementation is challenging. The algorithm would need to be modified to account for areas that other drones recently visited and allow weighting for ease of ingress (i.e. it’s not likely someone will scale a cliff wall to infiltrate your property. A lot of ‘intrusions’ will come through the driveway). Bonus points for a speaker system that would have the drone direct visitors to the appropriate entrance (please follow me to the front door) — a personal desire because delivery people seem to believe both our garage and our kitchen patio are the front door.

This is a great security solution when it’s unique, but were the idea to be widely adopted … it would suck as a home security implementation. Why? Drones with video feeds sound like a great way to deter trespassing. But drones have practical limitations. Home break-ins would be performed during storms. Or heavy snowfall. Or …

What if the drone charging base has wheels – during adverse weather, the drone can convert itself into an autonomous land vehicle. I’d probably include an additional battery in the base as the wheeled vehicle traversing land would use more energy. And there would be places a wheeled vehicle could not travel. The converted drone would be able to cover some of the property, and generally the area closest to the structures could be traversed.