One year ago, shock and outrage swept across the UK in the wake of the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard by police officer Wayne Couzens. Fear and anger were the other emotions at the fore, particularly among those who knew well how the violent incident was just one of many inflicted on women every day.
In a tribute to mark a year since the marketing executive's murder, Sarah Everard's family have said their lives are "changed forever" and "we miss her all the time".
For Drone Defence, a British security business, Sarah’s case prompted a team of experts to develop technology to protect vulnerable women from predators.
Using artificial intelligence, a powerful spotlight and thermal cameras, the company created an automated drone response system called AeroGuard which can be summoned to a scene using a phone app.
Designed by a team of former police officers and Civil Aviation Authority experts, AeroGuard could arrive to a within minutes of being deployed to frighten off a potential assailant.
Richard Gill, founder of the company behind the technology, told The National that Sarah’s murder and the realisation of how prevalent such violence was spurred him to create AeroGuard.
“I'm a father of three little girls, I don't want my girls growing up in a world where they don't feel safe to go out at night,” says Mr Gill at his offices in Nottinghamshire, north England.
“One in five women do not go out alone at night because they don't feel safe and that is just unacceptable.”
Mr Couzens abducted Ms Everard as she walked home from a friend's house in Clapham, south London, on the evening of March 3.
The 48-year-old policeman, who used his warrant card and handcuffs to carry out the crime, was given a whole-life prison sentence in September.
A soldier in the British army for ten years, Mr Gill said he first saw drones being used in Afghanistan to gather life-saving information from the battlefield and believed the technology could be used to do the same in non-military settings.
“If by deploying these drones, it gives people who feel vulnerable a bit of confidence and also acts as a deterrent to a would-be attacker, then we think it is absolutely worthwhile to do it,” says Mr Gill, whose company provides drone detection technology to prisons, airports and wealthy individuals.
The drones will be trialled at Nottingham University to protect students and staff on campus but AeroGuard’s inventors believe unmanned drones could eventually take over surveillance functions of police helicopters at a fraction of the cost.
“It is a high capability drone that costs just £100 an hour but can do 80 per cent of what a police helicopter, which costs £3,200 an hour, can do,” says Mr Gill.
Needing a crew of up to five people, helicopters are also noisier and use aviation fuel rather than electricity but they are speedier than drones and can stay airborne for longer.
AeroGuard’s developers claim their drone technology could reach its location within four minutes compared with 20 minutes to deploy a police helicopter.
Police forces across the UK have started to use drones to carry out operations including pursuing suspects and searching for missing people.
Plans for the pilot project in Nottingham have been submitted for funding to the Government’s Innovate research programme, which is designed to promote cutting-edge technology, and the company will learn if they’ve been successful later this month.
If they get the financing and go-ahead from regulators, Mr Gill has his sights on placing AeroGuards across towns and cities in the UK.
“We'd like to see it deployed in London. It would be about 25 drones and we could the whole of the inside of the M25. And if we can do that, then we can basically do it anywhere in the world.”
