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The drone arms race is heating up! Here’s a jammer:

A company called DroneShield has introduced a 13-pound, rifle-shaped jammer that it says can take down drones from a distance as far as 1.2 miles away.

The DroneGun isn’t meant for drone hobbyists or their vengeful neighbors. The company says it could thwart drones carrying explosives intended to carry out a civilian or military attack, or stop those that venture illegally into restricted airspace or onto prohibited property.

The gun’s effect is not exactly obvious. There’s no projectile fired or resulting explosion that would make for great action-movie footage. Instead, the DroneGun jams the radio and/or GPS frequency that tells the drone where to go. The gun operator can then land the drone immediately or signal it to return home.

Well, we’ve talked about self-ordering kiosks at McDonalds. And then we talked about them again. And then Wendy’s installed them. And the future is now:

Earlier this month, McDonald’s announced the nationwide roll-out of touchscreen self-service kiosks. In a video the company released to showcase the new customer experience, it’s striking to see employees who once would have managed a cash register now reduced to monitoring a customer’s choices at an iPad-style kiosk.

It’s not just McDonald’s that has embraced job-replacing technology. Numerous restaurant chains (both quick service and full service) have looked to computer tablets as a solution for rising labor costs that won’t adversely impact the customer’s experience. Eatsa, a fully-automated restaurant concept, now has five locations—all in cities or states that have embraced a $15 minimum wage. And in a scene stolen from The Jetsons, the Starship delivery robot is now navigating the streets of San Francisco with groceries and other consumer goods. The company’s founder pointed to a rising minimum wage as a key factor driving the growth of his automated delivery business.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 1st, 2016 at 12:37 am and is filed under Market Action. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.