Dubai Police Get Hoverbikes (mashable.com)

An anonymous reader quotes Mashable: The Dubai police, which already has luxury patrol cars, self-driving pursuit drones, and a robot officer, just announced it will soon have officers buzzing around on hoverbikes, which look like an early version of the speeder bikes used by the scout troopers on Endor in Return of the Jedi. The force (see what I did there?) unveiled its new Hoversurf Scorpion craft at the Gitex Technology Week conference, according to UAE English language publication Gulf News. The police force will use the hoverbike for emergency response scenarios, giving officers the ability to zoom over congested traffic conditions by taking to the air... The Scorpion can also fly autonomously for almost four miles at a time for other emergencies.
The fully-electric hoverbike stays aloft for about 25 minutes per charge at a top speed around 43 mph.

Gulf News also reported that Dubai police "unveiled robotic vehicles which will be equipped with biometric software to scan for wanted criminals and undesirable elements."

Comments

Also: beheadings on the fly!

[Cyberax]

And with these unprotected blades rotating at high speed they can also perform beheadings on the fly! Sounds like it's a great feature for Dubai police.

Re:Also: beheadings on the fly!

[Anonymous Coward]

Definitely a feature, not a bug. Also great for making coleslaw.

Re:Also: beheadings on the fly!

[Tablizer]

unprotected blades rotating at high speed...can also perform beheadings on the fly!

Citizens now call it "Dubye"

Re:Also: beheadings on the fly!

[AmiMoJo]

It's not actually for serious police work, it's a spectacle for tourists and a relatively cheap way to do some global advertising. Same as the expensive cop cars, the police don't actually use them to get to crimes at 200 MPH, they just make Dubai look like an ultra-luxury destination awash with money.

Re:Can be taken out by EMP

[Mr D from 63]

A well timed and well placed EMP would probably be a very painful experience for whomever was riding the hoverbike at the time.

As would contact with one of those open blades.

The video is long on fluff and short on any actual flying. Clearly, a long way from practical use.

Capital punishment

[Neo-Rio-101]

If you mess with the Police's hoverbike blades, the punishment is getting your hands chopped off.

Not the right product

[Baron_Yam]

Give me a regular bike where the (ducted / screened) blades fold down for flight when needed, controlled by wire so a computer can keep it level and steady and at a constant altitude so all the rider generally has to worry about is speed and direction.

That thing, as is, is a stupid waste of money.

geez

[gravewax]

That thing looks like a death trap, a bit of buffeting causing you to move and you could lose a leg or two not to mention a failure of a single engine would surely be completely catastrophic for the rider

Must be a joke

[markdavis]

>"giving officers the ability to zoom over congested traffic conditions by taking to the air...

Insanely unsafe to have that thing go OVER cars and people. 4 unprotected rotors? One operator error or equipment malfunction and it can chop people or things to bits or just fall out of the air like a 500 pound rock.

>"The fully-electric hoverbike stays aloft for about 25 minutes per charge"

And then you have to get back to the charger, so that is an outward range of what, 12.5 miles?? And it probably can only carry a single person with minimal equipment, right?

Is this a joke?

Misplaced concerns regarding safety

[93 Escort Wagon]

And you all call yourself nerds...

That hover bike doesn't need lame crap like blade protectors. What it DOES need is a couple of rocket launchers.

Re:Such emergencies

[Calydor]

We were talking about things that aren't actually hazardous, though.

Not only will you wipe out

[future assassin]

but cut up by the blades.

Let's put on my controls engineer hat

[RightwingNutjob]

This thing sucks. With the guy sitting up above the plane of the rotor (or hanging down below), the moment of inertia is about as high as it gets, meaning the control authority of the rotors is lower. At the same time, sitting up that high, the lever arm for the aerodynamic force from wind disturbances catching the rider are maximized. Side-to-side the baseline between the rotors is lower than front-to-back. That's why you see him wobble side-to-side when he flew down the parking lot.

These statements generally hold true for all aircraft, which is why larger aircraft are "safer" from a wind gust perspective than smaller aircraft. So what we've got here is something that's pretty bad from a stability perspective being pitched for an application where agility is necessary and the wind gust environment around them skyscrapers in the desert is potentially quite severe.

More money than brains.

Re:Let's put on my controls engineer hat

[w3woody]

I guess that's why they put the blades of a helicopter on the bottom...

Wrong Hat.

[hey!]

You know, the Dubai police also have a fleet of 14 hypercars -- Bugattis, Lambos, McLarens. With your engineer hat, you'd wonder why not pick one and standardize on that?

Because they don't have them to chase down joy riders in other supercars, as most people assume. The Dubai police has a collection of million dollar cars for the same reason a middle-aged dot-com billionaire does: because they think it makes them look cool. The Dubai police hypercars don't do high speed chases on desert highways, they patrol places with lots of pedestrian traffic. You can flag one down and the officer will let you take a selfie with him.

They don't buy this kind shit for policing. They buy it for branding. And it works. If they didn't do this kind of stuff far fewer people around the world would even have heard about them. Now everybody know that Dubai is not only rich, but ridiculously rich. That gives them a higher profile, and in turn translates into political influence.