Tethered Drones Are Fast Becoming A Staple For Police And Fire Departments

The Fotokite Sigma has recently been mentioned as one of the more common tethered drones used by police and fire departments to provide simple and easy situational awareness.

Drones (including tethered drones) are becoming critical tools for all kinds of use cases in law enforcement and firefighting. In many aspects of their emergency operations, a new era driven by drone usage is emerging, featured in the latest article, ‘11 Ways Police Departments are using drones’ from Police1.com.

Wide adoption of drones

From traffic crash reconstruction, pre-tactical deployment, reconnaissance, special ops, fire response to search and rescue, classical drones, as well as tethered drones are now known for bringing additional safety during critical situations and an improved operational effectiveness over all. Emergency teams and public safety chiefs are embracing this new technology into their daily operations.

Drones are being used for everything from special operations and reconnaissance before tactical deployments, reconstruction of traffic crashes and life-saving search and rescue missions.

Free-flying drones and tethered drones

Emergency teams and public safety chiefs are embracing this new technology in their daily operations

Free-flying drones along with tethered drones are now allowing first responders to gain game changing situational awareness during critical situations, resulting in an improved operational effectiveness.

Emergency teams and public safety chiefs are embracing this new technology in their daily operations. For example, here is a great example of how the Oklahoma City Fire Department uses Fotokite in their daily operations.

The simplicity and persistent ‘eye in the sky’ is driving more and more public safety, fire, emergency management and departments of transportation to harness the value that tethered drones bring to their deployments.

Stationary and real-time situational awareness

Providing stationary, real-time situational awareness, as simple as a one-button touch, at many emergency scenes, as described in the following excerpt from article, ‘11 Ways Police Departments are using drones’ from Police1.com.

Tethered drones are another tool being deployed by law enforcement and other public safety agencies. The drones are deployed in a stationary mode, which allows continuous over-watch. The tether serves as its power source and negates the need to change batteries. The tethered operation is relatively simple: a one-button launch and one-button land.

Tethered drones can be mounted on a vehicle

Fotokite is one of the more common tethered drones and sees significant deployment by fire departments"

“The tethered drone offers a way to maintain the scene perimeter and both visual optic and thermal images that can be streamed in real-time. Tethered drones can be mounted on a vehicle, in a compartment, or be portable in a Pelican case and launched in seconds. Fotokite is one of the more common tethered drones and sees significant deployment by fire departments,” said Chief Charles Werner.

In addition, a recent Droneresponders.org research report shows that more than 5,000 public safety agencies have already implemented drone programs in the U.S. An estimated 2/3 are law enforcement agencies.

Fotokite to monitor fire and emergency response

According to the IEDO 2022 report of Best practices in robotics, whether in firefighting, traffic monitoring or crowd management, autonomy over longer periods of time is one of the key advantages of tethered drones (wired drones). The Merrill Fire Department uses Fotokite to monitor a long-lasting fire and emergency response.

Fotokite is proud to work in close partnership with some of the best public safety teams in the world. Thanks to a strong partnership with Axon Air, Fotokite is continuously working to introduce tethered drones to law enforcement teams that have existing or new drone programs in place. Fotokite also has a technology partnership with fire equipment leader - MSA, which offers an enhanced connected platform called FireGrid.

Fotokite Sigma tethered drones

As a result, Fotokite Sigma tethered drones are currently being flown by the Fire Department of New York, Chicago Fire Department, Los Angeles Fire Department, Montreal SPVM, London Metropolitan Police, Paris and Zurich Fire Brigades and many more.