In the fantasy motion picture “Blade Runner 2049” actor Ryan Gosling portrays a futuristic police officer called a Blade Runner who hunts down human replicant fugitives on a post-apocalyptic Earth. The film is set in 2049 in Los Angeles, where flying cars dominate the sky and advanced technology is everywhere. In the opening scene, Gosling’s character, Officer K, arrives at a secluded farm to locate a replicant fugitive. As he lands his flying car, an unmanned aircraft autonomously launches from the vehicle’s roof and begins a scan ofthe area after being given a simple voice command. 

As the hunted fugitive considers his fight or flight options, he looks up at the ominous hovering aircraft. He seemingly knows that running away or avoiding detection is futile, and even more apparent is the critical fact that he has lost the element of surprise. The aircraft appears many times in the movie and utilizes voice commands, a live video feed to the in-car computer, three-dimensional scanning and multiple camera functions, including high-resolution zoom and thermal optics.

The UAS technology available to law enforcement today is a good start, but the future is in autonomy and artificial intelligence (AI), not in manually piloted flight.