Under the FAA’s remote control guidelines, most photographers and videographers can get away with doing as much UAV photography as they want. Problems arise when you try to turn your aerial photography into a business, as one Minnesota-based company found out earlier this week. Read more…

What do you get when you combine 368 5MP cellphone cameras into a mosaic and add some other super-secret parts? You get the DARPA-funded Autonomous Real-Time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance Imaging System (or ARGUS-IS), and this puppy can see your house from, well, wherever it darn well pleases.

Altogether, ARGUS-IS is a 1.8 Gigapixel drone-mounted surveillance system that took 30 months and $18.5M to become a reality. The video above is a clip from a new PBS documentary titled “Rise of the Drones“. It offers a fascinating peek at what the drone cam is capable of. Read more…