Being Pestered By Drones? Buy a Drone-Hunting Drone

schwit1 writes, "Are paparazzi flying drones over your garden to snap you sunbathing? You may need the Rapere, the drone-hunting drone which uses 'tangle-lines' to quickly down its prey." From The Telegraph's article: It has been designed to be faster and more agile than other drones to ensure that they can't escape - partly by limiting flight time and therefore reducing weight. “Having worked in the UAS industry for years, we've collectively never come across any bogus use of drones. However it's inevitable that will happen, and for people such as celebrities, where there is profit to be made in illegally invading their privacy, there should be an option to thwart it,” the group say on their website. This seems more efficient than going after those pesky paparazzi drones with fighting kites (video), but it should also inspire some skepticism: CNET notes that the team behind it is anonymous, and that "Rapere works in a lab setting, however there aren't any photos or videos of the killer drone in action. The website instead has only a slideshow of the concept."

Comments

Heh

[Torp]

There was that old sf story by Robert Silverberg, I think, that went like this: They made automated police drones (they weren't called drones back then) that prevented any violent crime from happening. Unfortunately they had learning circuits and decided even killing animals for food or harvesting crops was violent crime, and the society ended up starving. The solution was to create a new kind of drone to kill the existing drones - but this also had learning circuits and it decided it had to kill everyone.
Looks pretty realistic these days. Anyone remember the name of the story, and the author if i got it wrong?

Re:Heh

[evenmoreconfused]

No, but I remember a similar one of his about hacker-types disabling all the "cops-eyes" (his term) used to monitor a public park. Everything goes to hell shortly thereafter. I still have it around here somewhere...

Re:Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

"Watchbird" by Robert Sheckley.

Re:Heh

[Torp]

Thanks! I always confuse Sheckley and Silverberg :)
It seems to be available legally online on Project Gutenberg, if you found the article interesting go read it for a laugh: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebook...

Solution looking for a problem

[retroworks]

How big a market is this "defensive" drone problem? Seems more likely the market is bullies chasing down innocent drones

Re:Solution looking for a problem

[Harlequin80]

Depending on the height an air rifle, or if that is illegal a decent slingshot would be a cheaper easier alternative. You don't need to do a lot of damage to bring them down.

If we are talking serious height, chances are you haven't even noticed it is there.

Re:Solution looking for a problem

[TheRealHocusLocus]

If there's a drone hovering over my land, or my 'charge' if I am hired security, it is guilty until proven innocent.

We did not build fences and walls -- and for that matter -- start wearing clothes, only to keep out the weather. We developed personal boundaries and we even invisibly project them around us when we move. If you've ever been asked "What're YOU lookin' at?" by someone, you know this even extends to where you are gazing in public. A common stumble in across cultures is violating staring rules. Expected behavior and perceived intent matters.

One of our sharpest instinctive startle-reactions is the sudden appearance of eyes in places where eyes were not expected, or where eyes should not be. This has evolved with us from a predator mechanism, where swift action becomes necessary, and it is why spotting glowing eyes around a campfire generates a moment of apprehension. Modern humans have correctly characterized drones as eyes in the sky. Unlike helicopters which strive to spend their time beyond the dead man's curve drones are close and personal and quiet.

You can also follow this eyes in the sky phenomenon in history. Even friendly nations felt it necessary to go on alert when their neighbors unexpectedly entered their airspace for reconnaissance flights, and during the Cold War these incursions were considered acts of war. The Treaty On Open Skies was the culmination of 50 year effort to declare aerial surveillance a mutually beneficial activity. Originally proposed by Eisenhower, this treaty was like a 'cease and desist' order for those who sought to keep aerial photography out of reach of the common man, just as there are those who would try to keep secure encryption from the public, oh holy shit President Obama why are you starting this Clipper crap again, sorry about that, and has paved the way for the Google Earth we all know and love to browse.

Interestingly the treaty limits its signatories' ground resolution to 30 centimeters. Enough to count fighter planes but not good enough to gawk at bathing beauties.

So scale this eyes where eyes are not supposed to be thing down to the personal level as part of a right to privacy. The problem is that predatory paparazzi are assholes and bullies, and the people who read tabloid magazines are their silent enablers. For every measure, a suitable countermeasure. That is the market, and you can bet if I was on a security detail one of these would be on my Xmas list.

If you are comforted to be watched over by machines of loving grace... smile, you're on Candid Camera.

Re:Solution looking for a problem

[jjhues7676]

Nothing a good 12 gauge shotgun would not fix!

Re:Solution looking for a problem

[rmdingler]

Punkin Chunkin might be more dynamic, engineering-wise, if rifle-like accuracy is not your goal.

Re:Solution looking for a problem

[drinkypoo]

Depending on the height an air rifle, or if that is illegal a decent slingshot would be a cheaper easier alternative.

It's not legal to throw a rock in a city area if you don't know where it will land, and by the same token, it's not legal to fire even an airgun into the sky if you don't know where the projectile is coming down. In the boondocks with no nearby neighbors your solution might be viable, but the drone-attacking drone is a more practical solution for city use.

Re:Solution looking for a problem

[drinkypoo]

We did not build fences and walls -- and for that matter -- start wearing clothes, only to keep out the weather

No, it was done out of fear that other people would treat us the way we treat them.

Re:Solution looking for a problem

[chihowa]

An air rifle would be fine for city use. A BB has next to no kinetic energy by the time it returns to the ground. Air resistance is a real energy sapper for things that small.

A thrown rock or a slung projectile will be larger and more massive and so retain more of its kinetic energy on return. The attacked drone falling from the sky will do more potential damage than any of the projectiles you'd use to bring it down.

Re:Solution looking for a problem

[TheRealHocusLocus]

destroying other people's property based on them is unlikely to go well for you.

I'd lay odds that the Secret Service will be their first customer because unidentified drones cannot be tolerated in their controlled area, and they try to avoid sniping things unless a clear threat is in progress.

It's a cryin' shame that Deer Trail, Colorado voted down its proposed $25/year drone hunting license. Of 181 votes cast ~73% were against. This makes perfect sense to me, because at any point in history it seems only ~25% of any given population seems able to spot and move against certain trends that would take us down a bad road. And I'm not just talking about the guv'mint.

Up to now paparazzi, peeping toms and criminals casing potential victims and whole neighborhoods have had to grace their target areas with their physical presence, which has held them greatly in check.

I'm sure many are excited at the prospect of Amazon deliveries and pizzas buzzing through the skies -- or just exploring -- just for the novelty of how cool it would be. Hell, whole generations of us were enthralled by the "drone footage" at the beginning of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood and how it would show a bird's eye view as he left home to visit his neighbors. Or perhaps you imagine something like this. Reality is a lot messier as they become commonplace. Drone operators will be watching their objectives on the ground and zooming their lenses as they fail to spot each other, power lines and aviation.

They will be crashing down onto busy roadways. As their payloads become heavier and their motors stronger there is potential for real harm to bystanders. When signal is lost or power is low they will go into autonomous descent without regard to the hazards below (such as fast moving traffic). It is inevitable that the use of 'cheap' drones is to become a favored method of terrorists. All of these things will happen by degrees.

We put pilots through the wringer and hold aircraft to ultra-high standards of reliability for good reason. We must not brush these things off lightly, and allow the the skies to become filled moving with objects of unknown purpose and origin. Unless we are really, really excited about putting pizza delivery folk out of work.

Re:Solution looking for a problem

[__aajfby9338]

But wouldn't that shot/pebble-like-stuff fall and potentially hurt someone?

I don't think that birdshot is dangerous on the way back down, unless a pellet falls right into your upturned eye. It has enough kinetic energy to harm a bird (or fragile drone) within some range of the shooter, but by the time it comes back down it has slowed to terminal velocity. Birdshot is only around a millimeter in diameter, like coarse sand. The "pebble-like-stuff" would be buckshot, which would not be practical to use against a bird/drone because not many pellets of that shot fit in a shell, making it pretty hard to actually hit a flying target with at least one pellet.

Despite the relative safety of falling birdshot, firing guns into the air in urban settings is generally frowned upon. :)

Cheaper: Ballons

[drolli]

Put 4 big helium ballons and place nylon wires between them. Operates 24h a day and is cheap.

Re:Cheaper: Ballons

[drolli]

on 4 weather ballon, you can place ~ 8 km of nylon fishing line.

So you can randomly traverse a 100x100x100m volume 80 times.

Not unlikely that you crash the papparazis expensive drone with this approach.

Re:Inevitible

[Baron_Yam]

Don't forget that guy in New Zealand who designed and built an inexpensive home-built cruise missile that could be launched from a pickup truck. It wasn't big, but it was effectively unstoppable and theoretically pretty easy to launch and escape without getting caught.

The important part here, is that he built a guidance system for it. Adapt that for a small drone platform, and suddenly you don't need to be at the controls or within visual range of the thing.

So that would be...

[damn_registrars]

A solution in search of a drone, in search of a problem

(too long to fit in the subject line)

Unnecessarily hi-tech

[larwe]

Assuming this was actually a problem, a spring-loaded net gun would be a cheaper, easier, unregulated solution to the whole problem. You don't need much of a net, either - just some monofilament to tangle the drones' rotors.

Surface to Drone Missile

[jfdavis668]

I'm waiting for the integrated home air defense package complete with radar and surface to drone missiles.

Begun

[Intrepid imaginaut]

The drone war has!

Easyer solution: A hawk-friendly environment

[Qbertino]

An easyer solution and way more fun :-):
Hawk vs. Drone: 1 - 0

"Only"

[SuperKendall]

drone operators would only need to glue razorblades on the tips of the rotors

Which would Only affect the entry aerodynamic stability of the craft, making it just as likely it would slit the operators throat on launch as it would be to slice through anything, or be controllable at all...

Re:"Only"

[marcello_dl]

You say that as it were a bad thing.