Robots and small helicopters are coming to the aid of police officers and other first responders, preparing them for any emergency situation. “Just knowing what’s going on inside a house that we would go into cold — [we could] potentially save officers’ lives and victims’ lives,” Phil Mancini, a detective on the Roseville police desk, told NBC News. He has been advising a group at Carnegie Mellon University that is building a swarm of cheap, small flying helicopters that could come to the aid of officers across the country. And it's worked in the past -- in May last year, the Royal Canadian Mountain Police used a quadcopter carrying an infrared camera to find an injured person after his car flipped over in the snow in Saskatchewan. In Grand Forks County, North Dakota, the sheriff’s office used drones last season to check on flooded farms. This smaller equipment is also cost efficient.
