Lantern
Situational awareness, before the first officer arrives.
When a call comes in, a nearby rooftop drone launches and delivers live video to dispatch and responding officers in as little as 90 seconds.
The gap this closes
Typical time from first alarm to someone seeing the scene, on a mid-sized campus.
Lantern overheadfrom the nearest dock
1 min 30 s
First patrol caron a good day
8 min
First patrol caracross campus, during class change
12 min
What happens when a call comes in
The campus at rest. Aircraft docked on a rooftop near the center.
0:00 Blue-light call from the lot by the arena.
0:14 Launched from the nearest dock. Flying itself there.
1:30 Live video to dispatch and every unit on the way.
Something raises the alarm
A 911 call, a blue-light phone, a panic button, a door alarm. Lantern never decides on its own that something is wrong. It responds to the alarms your campus already has.
Dispatch launches with one action
The dispatcher sends the aircraft to the address without leaving the console. The nearest dock opens, the aircraft launches, and it flies itself there — around trees, around buildings.
Everyone en route sees the same picture
Live video reaches dispatch, incident command, and the phone of every responding officer. Which building. Which door. Who is outside it. Often, that nothing is happening at all.
Two products. One system.
Aircraft
A camera with rotors. White shell, guarded props, a visible gimbal, and your safety office's name on the side. Built to be recognized, not to impress.
- Motor to motor
- 400 mm
- Weight
- 2.0 kg all-up
- Endurance
- 35 min, full payload
- Cameras
- 30× optical zoom and 640 × 512 thermal
- Weather
- −10 °C to 45 °C, gusts to 25 kt
- Noise at 200 ft
- Under 65 dBA
Dock
A rooftop box that opens, launches, catches and charges the aircraft with no one present.
- Coverage
- About half a mile, 90 s to overhead
- Landing
- Within 10 cm, self-centering pad
- Recharge
- To 80% in 35 min
- Climate
- Heated and cooled, cold starts year-round
- Power loss
- Two launches on battery backup
- Availability
- 99.5% monthly, reported to you
What it will not do
- Identify people.No facial recognition, no biometrics. Not configurable, not available.
- Decide someone is a threat.No automated weapon or behavior detection. A person looks at the video and makes the call.
- Patrol.The aircraft does not fly on a schedule or watch the campus. It leaves the dock when there is a call and returns when the call is over.
- See indoors.It gives you the building, the entrances, the exits and the approach. It does not give you the hallway.
- Fly where you've said it can't.Residence hall windows, the health center, the neighbors' property. Exclusion zones are enforced in the flight software, not in a policy binder.
- Keep footage it doesn't need.Non-incident flights delete themselves on a short clock you set. Every view is logged.
Legible to the people it flies over
Every campus running Lantern publishes a flight log. Not the video — the count, the reason, how long the aircraft was up, and whether the ground response was cancelled after the aircraft arrived. That last number is usually the one that wins over a skeptical room.
We provide a use-policy template written for shared governance, and we'll sit in the meeting where it gets debated.
Flight log, example weekPublic
Mon — welfare check, north quad4 minGround stood down
Tue — alarm, engineering loading dock6 minOfficers continued
Wed — blue-light call, lot C3 minGround stood down
Thu — medical, athletics fields9 minOfficers continued
Sat — noise complaint, no launch—Declined by dispatch