What would be legitimate civilian uses for this technology apart from [0]? After the 10k drone swarm the other day and the pager attacks all I can think of is slaughterbots, which is genuinely freaking me out.
[0] - https://xkcd.com/2128/
[0] - https://xkcd.com/2128/
Buy satellite images of container ports, count the number of containers, predict performance of economy based on containers and invest accordingly.
Presidential candidate has an open-air rally and you want to figure out how many people are attending? Buy a satellite image scheduled for that exact hour and let WALDO count the people.
Financing a number of large construction projects but don't trust the progress reports? Buy regularly scheduled satellite images and let WALDO count the number of trucks and construction vehicles.
Want to invest in the construction business? Guess what, buy satellite images, count trucks and construction vehicles, make investment decisions based on that
It's not just for drones, it's for any overhead imaging.
This can be used for all kinds of things like search and rescue, traffic monitoring, watching for wildfires, disaster response, monitoring parking lots as an economic indicator, etc.
Fly a handful of drones over the area of a fleeing suspect and be able to track their whereabouts and look for suspicious behaviors (eg. someone running and making constant turns in a city or doubling back often, cutting through alleys).
Hell fly a few drones of the city to monitor foot traffic of the population and determine possible points of interest for new developments. Where are people walking to? How do they tend to get there? Can we optimize traffic for them - or more realistically - around them?
Could be used for other forms of crowd analysis too such as how to best disperse a riot and separate a crowd.
Sorry I guess I'm about as pessimistic as you are about it. Use in S&R like throwup238 suggested seems like a good non-militaristic fit for it.
Oh and also this which was posted on HN not too long ago: https://dropofahat.zone/
When you'd only need CCTV to confirm with facial recognition that your suspect was in the area you wouldn't need CCTV coordination - that would be the entire point of deploying a WALDO network. It lowers the number of CCTV you'd need to coordinate with to track someone's movements.