The CUPID stun gun drone will hunt you down, zap you into submission

By Andrew Couts March 10, 2014

stun gun drone cupid copter — Image used with permission by copyright holder

As a huge fan of both drones and stun guns, I can’t help but get excited about the latest development in aerial weaponry: the stun gun drone, created by Chaotic Moon Studios, and shown off during SXSW festivities in a recent video shot by Popular Science (see below) at the Chaotic Moon offices.

The so-called Chaotic Unmanned Personal Intercept Drone, aka CUPID or “stun copter,” doles out 80,000 volts of electricity to poor saps who happen to cross its artificially intelligent path. The company, which creates all types of high-tech goodies, says it could potentially be used by law enforcement to apprehend criminals. As Engadget reports, one officer would fly the stun-gun-outfitted mini-copter, while another officer would control the stun gun. More likely, I think, is that the CUPID will be used by frat boys to hurt each other.

Built from a Tarot Hexacopter, a giant bladed contraption used to carry DSLR cameras, the stun copter is outfitted with a Phazzer Dragon “conductive energy weapon” – otherwise known as a TASER. But since TASER is a brand name, Phazzer has to pull some linguistic maneuvers to avoid getting shot down in the courts.

Believe it or not, the idea of outfitting a drone with electric weapons is far from new. The most notable creation may be the ShockerDrone (formerly known as the TaserDrone, but renamed for the same reason that Phazzer calls its products “conductive energy weapons”), which was created in 2012 by the evil geniuses at Hackaday. Whereas the CUPID shoots its electrified talons into its targets, however, the ShockerDrone simply has charged metal tape on its body, and runs into people to shock them.

Check out the CUPID stun copter below:

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Features Editor for Digital Trends, Andrew Couts covers a wide swath of consumer technology topics, with particular focus on…

News

Digital Trends’ Top Tech of CES 2023 Awards

Best of CES 2023 Awards Our Top Tech from the Show Feature

Let there be no doubt: CES isn’t just alive in 2023; it’s thriving. Take one glance at the taxi gridlock outside the Las Vegas Convention Center and it’s evident that two quiet COVID years didn’t kill the world’s desire for an overcrowded in-person tech extravaganza -- they just built up a ravenous demand.

From VR to AI, eVTOLs and QD-OLED, the acronyms were flying and fresh technologies populated every corner of the show floor, and even the parking lot. So naturally, we poked, prodded, and tried on everything we could. They weren’t all revolutionary. But they didn’t have to be. We’ve watched enough waves of “game-changing” technologies that never quite arrive to know that sometimes it’s the little tweaks that really count.

News

Digital Trends’ Tech For Change CES 2023 Awards

Digital Trends CES 2023 Tech For Change Award Winners Feature

CES is more than just a neon-drenched show-and-tell session for the world’s biggest tech manufacturers. More and more, it’s also a place where companies showcase innovations that could truly make the world a better place — and at CES 2023, this type of tech was on full display. We saw everything from accessibility-minded PS5 controllers to pedal-powered smart desks. But of all the amazing innovations on display this year, these three impressed us the most:

Samsung's Relumino Mode
Across the globe, roughly 300 million people suffer from moderate to severe vision loss, and generally speaking, most TVs don’t take that into account. So in an effort to make television more accessible and enjoyable for those millions of people suffering from impaired vision, Samsung is adding a new picture mode to many of its new TVs.
[CES 2023] Relumino Mode: Innovation for every need | Samsung
Relumino Mode, as it’s called, works by adding a bunch of different visual filters to the picture simultaneously. Outlines of people and objects on screen are highlighted, the contrast and brightness of the overall picture are cranked up, and extra sharpness is applied to everything. The resulting video would likely look strange to people with normal vision, but for folks with low vision, it should look clearer and closer to "normal" than it otherwise would.
Excitingly, since Relumino Mode is ultimately just a clever software trick, this technology could theoretically be pushed out via a software update and installed on millions of existing Samsung TVs -- not just new and recently purchased ones.

Entertainment

AI turned Breaking Bad into an anime — and it’s terrifying

Split image of Breaking Bad anime characters.

These days, it seems like there's nothing AI programs can't do. Thanks to advancements in artificial intelligence, deepfakes have done digital "face-offs" with Hollywood celebrities in films and TV shows, VFX artists can de-age actors almost instantly, and ChatGPT has learned how to write big-budget screenplays in the blink of an eye. Pretty soon, AI will probably decide who wins at the Oscars.

Within the past year, AI has also been used to generate beautiful works of art in seconds, creating a viral new trend and causing a boon for fan artists everywhere. TikTok user @cyborgism recently broke the internet by posting a clip featuring many AI-generated pictures of Breaking Bad. The theme here is that the characters are depicted as anime characters straight out of the 1980s, and the result is concerning to say the least. Depending on your viewpoint, Breaking Bad AI (my unofficial name for it) shows how technology can either threaten the integrity of original works of art or nurture artistic expression.
What if AI created Breaking Bad as a 1980s anime?
Playing over Metro Boomin's rap remix of the famous "I am the one who knocks" monologue, the video features images of the cast that range from shockingly realistic to full-on exaggerated. The clip currently has over 65,000 likes on TikTok alone, and many other users have shared their thoughts on the art. One user wrote, "Regardless of the repercussions on the entertainment industry, I can't wait for AI to be advanced enough to animate the whole show like this."