Amazon has long been working on the idea of using drones to deliver your packages. However, the company has other ideas for its drones as well, one of which involves providing surveillance as a service to its customers. To that end, a patent has now been granted to Amazon by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
The patent details how these drones could be used to essentially keep an eye on the customers’ property between deliveries without comprising their privacy. Customers who opt for surveillance as a service from Amazon’s drones would receive videos recorded by the drones of their property. The video can be used to look out for a broken window, for example, or just to check whether they left the garage door open during the day.
The company mentions in its patent that the drone’s surveillance functionality can be limited with geo-fencing so that it doesn’t record video of someone else’s property. Furthermore, any data or images that are captured outside the geo-fenced area would be removed or obscured.
It would certainly be a more advanced home security service, one where a drone keeps an eye on the property for as long as the user wants, though it’s unclear if and when Amazon will ever offer this as a commercial service.
Filed in . Read more about Amazon.