Coming to a UW Campus Near You: Drones

Today Salon has an article called "Drones invade campus" which is about how universities are introducing drones into their curricula.

For all the attention given to U.S. law enforcement’s interest in adopting drones, the biggest users turn out to be not police departments, but universities. We learned this last week, when the Electronic Frontier Foundation forced the Federal Aviation Administration to reveal that it had approved 25 universities to fly drones in U.S. airspace. Not that universities were waiting on the FAA to begin working in the field: Last fall, Kansas State University created a degree in unmanned aviation. So far, 30 undergraduates have signed up.

The spreading drone curriculum is, for better and worse, a sign of the coming normalization of drones in American life. Interviews with university officials revealed widespread excitement about the possibilities of unmanned aviation technology, which has the potential to transform fields like agriculture and disaster response. The U.S. military, however, is funding parts of this academic research, and so are leading defense contractors. Whether their intentions are as pure as the universities’ is an open question.

If you go look at that list of universities authorized to fly drones in U.S. airspace you'll find that the University of Wisconsin is among them.

Jeez. I feel badly for future students as they're going to have drones searching out the student sections at football games for those who use profanity and send down a targeted strike. We can only hope collateral damage will be minimal.