Hi everyone,

I had a neat idea today for an EE device, which is an aerial drone, perhaps built like a quadcopter and equipped with both a camera and infrared sensors if that's possible, that would fly throughout an area and look for a missing person, whether the person is a fugitive bad guy wanted for arrest or a person who has gone missing who might be in danger.

The idea is to use some unique and innovative STEM ideas I had recently to figure out how to recognize a person who went missing recently, in a particular flight area, by recognizing the person's face and body shape, based on photographs that allow for the person's entire body to be modeled in three dimensions on a computer. For extra precision, a regular camera (as opposed to infrared) could be used to identify people comparing facial features, although that might be harder given obstructions to a person's face.

The system would be designed to fly over an area quickly, and do a comprehensive sweep of the area mainly with infrared, using my superior technology idea to try to find the person by face and body shape...a "match score" describing how closely the person matches the stored 3D photo or sketch would be assigned to various latitudes and longitudes of people who looked "fairly close" to the sketch or photo were located by the drone.

I will be doing more EE-related innovation work tomorrow and on other subsequent days, so I might have more good ideas to share soon!

-Philip White (philipjwhite@yahoo.com)