> The other day I was joking with friends about how I'd love to have a car with a deployable surveillance drone to help with parking and so if I'm stuck in traffic I could have my drone scout ahead and see what's up.

The Yutong electric buses that Ember use around where I live have something like this but I guess it just uses the cameras mounted around the bus. When the driver closes the door, the central screen on the dashboard does a kind "fake drone flyaround" of the bus, even showing reasonably realistic depictions of vehicles on the road around it.

A lot of modern SUVs have "360° backup camera" features which work similarly - the car uses footage from cameras mounted around the vehicle to synthesize a top-down view. It's great for backing out of tight parking spaces, and I can only imagine it's even more useful on a bus.