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Dutch Police Train Bald Eagles To Take Out Drones
Qbertino writes: Heise.de (German article) reports that the Dutch police is training raptor birds — bald eagles, too — to take down drones. There's a video (narrated and interviewed in Dutch) linked in TFA. It's a test phase and not yet determined if this is going real — concerns about the birds getting injured are among the counter-arguments against this course of action. This all is conducted by a company called "Guard from above," which designs systems to prevent smugling via drones. The article also mentions MTU's net-shooting quadcopter concept of a drone-predator. Of course, there are also 'untrained' birds taking out quadcopters, as you might have seen already.
So the Dutch are using birds to stop people from flying drones arrogantly?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
I for one welcome our Avian Overlords
Bald eagles are just glorified seagulls
You do realize, if I am not mistaken, that bald eagles are raptors, so "too" is a bit redundant. Maybe "including"?
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Wouldn't it be ironic (or maybe quite fitting) to have the symbol of American freedom take out an American drone? Yeah, I know... we aren't taking out Predator drones here, but I can dream, can't I?
Better be careful or they will end up talon-less as well as bald. (Anyway it would be cool if they could be trained to fly up from underneath, flip over, and grab the drone from below.)
... for the upcoming war against the flying SkyNet minions ;-)
The NL police should just teach the birds to drop a net onto the drone, gunking up the props. That way, the birds don't need to get near the drone.
This is like the future of the 1980's cartoons finally coming true.
In previous news in slashdot, an alleged Israeli spy vulture was caught by Lebanon.
The Israelis claimed this was ridiculous, that it was just an innocent bird.
But now we know the truth: the vulture was really out to get Lebanese drones!
Are these the same birds that have been outifitted with cameras by the Israeli secret service?
This is one of the "bright" ideas from people without practical knowledge. It sounds great, so why not?
Well, you probably shouldn't because even a small drone like the DJI Phantom will slice up or shred the birds legs on contact, though the drone will definitely crash. A larger drone would likely also crash but would probably amputate the birds legs.
All that training and the first encounter causes severe injury or death? There's probably a better way to down drones, and there's far less need to down drones than anyone fantasizes about.
We already have onetime use devices for taking down aircraft, they're called missiles.99.99% effective.
Drones Train Bald Eagles to Take Out Dutch Police
They so often seem to handle society's little problems so much more elegantly than the rest of us.
...but they STILL won't fly Frodo and Sam to Mount Doom. Damn you, Eagles!
Koans and fables for the software engineer
Are these eagles to be permanently "deployed" , living in the wild in border areas, or cared for and transported by staff?
If humans need to be involved each time , it seems like a "foamie" RC plane (with automatic stabilization) would be easier to handle than an eagle. Crashing into the drone would sometimes wreck the $25 foam body.
Having been severely cut by my own carelessness with my DJI Phantom; I'll have to say myth confirmed.
Those "small" plastic propellers cut the fuck out of me! I would not allow a bird or other animal (some dogs love chasing drones) to come in contact with a drone.
Larger carbon fiber blades will be much worse.
I hope they're investing in tiny little blacksmiths to make tiny plate leg armor for them or there'll be pieces of eagle feet strewn all over the dutch countryside.
An animal which relies on its feet for hunting and perching using those same apparatus against a 10k rpm plastic/carbon/maybe even metal rotor blade. Can only end well right?
I am adding this under the Bird vs. Robot category in my list of versus:
https://docs.google.com/spread...
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
Bald Eagles are native to North America. They simply don't exist in the wild anywhere else.
In the United States they were endangered most of my life (until about 10 years ago), and still to this day it is illegal to "own" one in captivity except under certain very rare circumstances. Usually, it has to be injured in some way which would physically prevent it from living in the wild.
In short, Bald Eagles should be wild. Combine that with them being a symbol of the USA, and a great many Americans find it offensive to see someone keeping one as a pet. Seriously offensive.
Yet I'm constantly seeing "tame" bald Eagles in Europe, and people there act like they aren't doing anything to be ashamed of. Another example is English Premiere League club Crystal Palace, which has a live Bald Eagle "mascot".
Where do they keep getting these Bald Eagles? Also, do they not care how offensive this is to Americans, or are they aware of that and are doing it on purpose?
Why don't we just cut out the middlemen and teach eagles how to fly around with cameras and little missiles?
Another in a long list of moronic solutions that will never work against an intelligent attack, or even a large number of idiots.
What does such a bird cost? How many can you deploy at once and how many drones can it remove per unit of time? Can you train it to ignore a $20, deliberately attractive, decoy drone (or ten) an target the payload drone instead?
The only generally useful and economically viable anti-drone system is one that can take out hundreds per minute and at a significant range without causing collateral damage by spraying the surroundings with debris or projectiles, and without causing broadcasted broadband electromagnetic interference.
Maybe you can design some kind of metal mesh on strategic places around your drone that carries a high voltage, enough to give the bird something to think about?
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
I guess if the Dutch try it, so can we.
I wonder if this is not being done all ready. Some guy growing drugs notices that there seem to be too many drones flying around and decides to take matter into his own hands. Better than shooting the drones with a rifle, as there is culpable deniability.
Probably not really bald eagles. Bald eagles are not native to Europe and the Google Translate version of the article does not seem to mention bald eagles.
The risk of hurting the eagle really makes this a bad idea. If only there was some sort of machine that could do this job, like a robo-eagle? It'd have to be an agile remote-controlled flying machine which used a camera to send images back to the operator.
Sadly such a thing hasn't been invented yet.
Can't an "EMP" gun take out drones pretty decently? I'm not sure, I'm just wondering.
.... who thinks this is actually really cool?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Nobody wants injured Eagles. So arm them with submachine guns. What could go wrong?
It must cost a lot of money taking down Phantom drones!
My Hexacopter spins 15" props what could go wrong.
News update dutch officials take donations for raptors missing legs.
It seems to me that jammers would be cheaper, more reliable, and would not attack police drones which doubtless operates a different frequency.
Can't someone build a $5 jammer and whoever is controlling a drone no longer can? There aren't many completely AI drones and they certainly don't cost under $1 million. That's easier than eagles and by definition a jammer for that frequency won't interfere with any electronics that the original transmitting controller for the drone would have.
It's the American way, which is the way to go if you want something destroyed. In fact according to the news (including slashdot), the US court system allows shooting down drones with shotguns even if it violates a gun ban. If your weapon of choice gets damaged on impact, I sure want to use birdshots rather than actual birds.
Check out this video.
...because they're going to lose a few with the rotors of any half-decent drone...
Dutch police ARE using... Dutch police is plural, so bad grammar there. Also, what is smugling? Any why do they want to prevent it?
it would seem likely one of the eagles would snatch one of the flying defibrillator drones if both these ideas were to be put in action.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2811851/The-ambulance-drone-save-life-Flying-defibrillator-reach-speeds-60mph.html
Am I the only one to see an arms race here? - Drones armed to take out birds, or escort drones means to distract the birds and keep them from attacking the important drone?
Like all arms races it can only either end badly or never - continuously escalating.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
It's not actually meant for anything like that at all.
In the video, the cops explain (in Dutch, so I completely understand that this isn't obvious to parent) that it's meant to take out the odd drone that is - often inadvertently - flying somewhere where it really shouldn't, such as near an airport, or somewhere where an air ambulance needs to land. Nowhere in the video is it claimed that the system will be used to stop terrorists, smuggling, mass idiocy, or anything like that. Consider it the air equivalent of a police canine unit.
I can imagine a hilarious scenario in the near future where drones become impossible to use, despite the want to use them, because the damn Dutch taught some birds to attack those flying circular things and they taught it to offspring over many successive generations.
This can only end hilariously.
The bird will be injured and never attack a drone again or worse, killed.
Try catching my 650 with 15 inch carbon fiber blades, a smart bird wouldn't get near it.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Just sayin'... The Bald Eagle is their national bird, and it's their surveillance system that has everyone up in arms... Am I not the only one who sees the irony in this?
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Falconry is still popular in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and elsewhere in the Middle East.
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
The quadcopter they showed with the eagle is a Spyrit Max FPV T2M, a toy level 230 size (measured in mm diagonally from motor-motor), and weighs less than 600g when it has the prop guards & camera on board (which it didn't at the time), yet the 360 sized quads (like the DJI Phantom) weigh around a 1000g and get heavier when you add things a camera & 3 axis gimbal, plus they have brushless motors that are far more powerful than the brushed motors of the Spyrit.
A Cheerson CX-20 is around the same size as a Phantom, and one has already accidentally killed a bald eagle that had attacked it: http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showpost.php?p=33893158&postcount=56152
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzE6-WZtOi4