 We're here at Chaotic Moon Studios. They've got an autonomous Taro MR-6 hexacopter, and they've decked it out with an 80,000 volt stun gun. My name is Whirly. I'm the co-founder of Chaotic Moon Studios and chief innovation officer, and we are in a new, soon-to-be-expanded-into space at Chaotic Moon's offices here in Austin, Texas. So what we wanted to do is we wanted to take some of these issues that people have been talking about, about drones patrolling the skies and being weaponized and all of these things and actually do some real-world engineering work around that to kind of raise the awareness. South by was a perfect area to do that. The original demo we did, we looked at three areas. We looked at personal safety, we looked at personal privacy, and then we looked at kind of some law enforcement implications. In the personal safety, kind of personal drone stuff, which is where we came up with the name Cupid, right? Chaotic Unmanned Personal Intercept Drone. What we did is we took a scenario of you're on a large swath of property, someone crosses a line, sets off an alarm. The drone then deploys itself. It finds the person. It kind of buzzes around them, and then you get a phone notification, and it says, you know, shows you a video from the drone. It says, detain or authorize. And if you say detain, then at that point, it goes back to fully autonomous. It's got its instructions. It notifies the authorities, the prerecorded message, and it tells you to please kneel down on your knees on the ground and put your hands behind your head. If you were to run away from the property line, the situational analysis would say, you're leaving. You're becoming less of a threat. And so it just hovers and stays there, and it lets you go. If you were to continue to advance or if you were to try to take out the drone, then it can make several semi-autonomous and autonomous decisions on whether it should tase you or not. And then it can continue to tase you until the authorities arrive. While this demo is entirely piloted, they say Cupid's capable of running the same test with almost no human intervention. I thought a lot about the situational analysis of, like, how could this be used, say, to keep officers out of danger? So perhaps there's a raid on a house, and somebody runs. Why send somebody with a gun chasing them down the alley? The drone could just go and detain them, and then you could just come in and pick them up. One of the interesting things is we looked at fencing and other areas and the physics of that. It's kind of like a parry and a thrust so that we could program when it's fully autonomous, it can put enough slack in the cable so that when you fall or if you run or if you flop, that it doesn't pull the drone out of the sky or pull the cable out of your back and so on and so forth. So it's actually aware of all of that situational analysis, and then it takes action accordingly based on kind of the physics of the environment. What we wanted to use was the stage of South By to raise awareness of, this is actually something that's possible now, so that we can kind of start a conversation about how do you feel as a citizen about police having that? How do police feel about having it? What do congressmen think? What does the FAA think? You know, so on and so forth. Because we think that there's not enough conversation right now, it's educated conversation, occurring around the entire kind of drone industry. In the end, it's a simple proof of concept. If we want to turn drones into non-lethal security guards, we know how to do that. So how do we feel about this? If you need a security guard, would you rather have a drone with a taser or a human being with a gun? With an idea this new, it's hard to say for sure. Even if we can build it, it feels like maybe we shouldn't.
 We're here at Chaotic Moon Studios.
 They've got an autonomous Taro MR-6 hexacopter, and they've decked it out with an 80,000 volt
 stun gun.
 My name is Whirly.
 I'm the co-founder of Chaotic Moon Studios and chief innovation officer, and we are in
 a new, soon-to-be-expanded-into space at Chaotic Moon's offices here in Austin, Texas.
 So what we wanted to do is we wanted to take some of these issues that people have been
 talking about, about drones patrolling the skies and being weaponized and all of these
 things and actually do some real-world engineering work around that to kind of raise the awareness.
 South by was a perfect area to do that.
 The original demo we did, we looked at three areas.
 We looked at personal safety, we looked at personal privacy, and then we looked at kind
 of some law enforcement implications.
 In the personal safety, kind of personal drone stuff, which is where we came up with the
 name Cupid, right?
 Chaotic Unmanned Personal Intercept Drone.
 What we did is we took a scenario of you're on a large swath of property, someone crosses
 a line, sets off an alarm.
 The drone then deploys itself.
 It finds the person.
 It kind of buzzes around them, and then you get a phone notification, and it says, you
 know, shows you a video from the drone.
 It says, detain or authorize.
 And if you say detain, then at that point, it goes back to fully autonomous.
 It's got its instructions.
 It notifies the authorities, the prerecorded message, and it tells you to please kneel
 down on your knees on the ground and put your hands behind your head.
 If you were to run away from the property line, the situational analysis would say,
 you're leaving.
 You're becoming less of a threat.
 And so it just hovers and stays there, and it lets you go.
 If you were to continue to advance or if you were to try to take out the drone, then it
 can make several semi-autonomous and autonomous decisions on whether it should tase you or
 not.
 And then it can continue to tase you until the authorities arrive.
 While this demo is entirely piloted, they say Cupid's capable of running the same test
 with almost no human intervention.
 I thought a lot about the situational analysis of, like, how could this be used, say, to
 keep officers out of danger?
 So perhaps there's a raid on a house, and somebody runs.
 Why send somebody with a gun chasing them down the alley?
 The drone could just go and detain them, and then you could just come in and pick them
 up.
 One of the interesting things is we looked at fencing and other areas and the physics
 of that.
 It's kind of like a parry and a thrust so that we could program when it's fully autonomous,
 it can put enough slack in the cable so that when you fall or if you run or if you flop,
 that it doesn't pull the drone out of the sky or pull the cable out of your back and
 so on and so forth.
 So it's actually aware of all of that situational analysis, and then it takes action accordingly
 based on kind of the physics of the environment.
 What we wanted to use was the stage of South By to raise awareness of, this is actually
 something that's possible now, so that we can kind of start a conversation about how
 do you feel as a citizen about police having that?
 How do police feel about having it?
 What do congressmen think?
 What does the FAA think?
 You know, so on and so forth.
 Because we think that there's not enough conversation right now, it's educated conversation,
 occurring around the entire kind of drone industry.
 In the end, it's a simple proof of concept.
 If we want to turn drones into non-lethal security guards, we know how to do that.
 So how do we feel about this?
 If you need a security guard, would you rather have a drone with a taser or a human being
 with a gun?
 With an idea this new, it's hard to say for sure.
 Even if we can build it, it feels like maybe we shouldn't.