High-Tech 'Bazooka' Fires a Net To Take Down Drones (bgr.com) 180
An anonymous reader writes: The brainchild of U.K.-based OpenWorks Engineering, SkyWall 100 uses a compressed air launcher to fire smart projectiles at targeted drones. The system, which has a range of 328 feet, uses a high-tech scope to lock on to Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). An onboard computer then tracks the target's flight path and calculates the trajectory required for the projectile to intercept either a hovering or flying drone. The canister-style projectile opens up when it reaches the drone and uses a net to capture the flying device. The projectile then deploys a parachute to bring the captured drone and the canister components safely back to the ground. "Once captured it can be impounded, forensically investigated or simply handed back with some words of education where appropriate," OpenWorks Engineering explained, adding that the risk of damaging the drone is also reduced.
Just use a shotgun (Score:5, Insightful)
2) Birdshot won't kill anyone
3) You don't have to worry as much about the "return of property" or "educate the user" hassles afterword
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq0oCM37oZA
Use lots of shotguns. And make sure you have lots of ammo.
Depends on the skill levels of both shooter and pilot, distance, whether or not the drone pilot sees the shooter with enough warning...
To be honest, it would be not much more than a slightly more complex version of skeet shooting, or a typical pheasant hunt at a slightly longer range, since drones are still somewhat subject to aerodynamics - In other words, completely doable.
The article is about a drone... (Score:3, Insightful)
A radio jammer would be better.
The article is about a drone, not about an RPV.
Yeah, I know: people who do not fly the things, and want everyone else to also not fly the things, can't tell the difference between a "drone" and a "remotely piloted vehicle".
Here's a clue: drones can operate autonomously or semiautonomously, and won't stop what they are doing if you try to jam the radio signals they aren't using when they are flying in autonomous mode, and will just switch to autonomous mode if they are operating semiautonomously and someone
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Good. Jammers are cheap. Drones are not.
Terrorists with jammers are also cheap, so I suppose you have a point.
Re:The article is about a drone... (Score:4, Informative)
You obviously don't work with these things. First, the actual linked article says "UAV", not "drone". Second, "drone" doesn't mean what you think it means. Drones (except possibly those that are intended to be targets for weapons combat tests) aren't actually "autonomous". And a jammer most definitely does have an impact. It may not mean the drone the stops functioning but it absolutely WILL mean that the drone leaves the area in all but a couple of instances.
And, as far as I know, after working with them for 20+ years now, there are no drones that would "kamikaze" a jammer. That's a ridiculous waste of resources. UAVs that lose radio comms resort to a return home function, or in a few cases a self destruct depending upon the situation and other airworthiness factors. None of them become bombs.
Re:The article is about a drone... (Score:4, Insightful)
EMP then.
You mean like the ones we use to shoot down planes, because they have avionics systems too?
Oh wait. We're not on "Scorpion" or "Mutant X" or "The Flash", and we're not "Agent's of S.H.I.E.L.D."... we know that it takes a nuclear weapon or a massive amount of equipment, like at the Rocky Mountain Weapons Test Facility, because of the inverse square law...
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No I think he doesn't mean EMP at all but something more like a HERF gun.
Similar concept, cause a flood of EM waves that induce currents where currents should not be and cause sensitive, unshielded electronics to malfunction catastrophically.
Not sure what the range on them is, but I would assume most drones are not that well shielded against something like this, and if they get close enough, it could even set their plastic bits on fire.... though... pretty sure at that range you could smack it with a broom
Re: The article is about a drone... (Score:3)
...we're not "Agent's of S.H.I.E.L.D."
What are you, my shrink??I'll decide what I am and am not, thank you very much.
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A radio jammer would be better.
And likely even more illegal than the drone.
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Yeah, would have the FCC and the FAA after your butt.
Re: Just use a shotgun (Score:1)
I found the drone pilot and shot him in the face with a shotgun. The drone crashed which is great, but what do I do with the body???
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I found the drone pilot and shot him in the face with a shotgun. The drone crashed which is great, but what do I do with the body???
Eat it.
Re:Just use a shotgun (Score:4, Interesting)
However, imagine there was a huge A-lister wedding happening at some outdoor location, like a remote Scottish castle. The organizers would be desperate to keep away the public's and the paparazzi's drones (there'll be a buyer for the pictures already lined up, who will want exclusivity).
However, I would suspect there would be liability, police and major PR issues of they ringed the event with shotgun-armed security people. This kit is an alternative that seems just what's needed. Security would quietly bring down the pap's drone and hand it back to its owner, along with their profuse apologies for "accidentally" standing one it when it was being recovered.
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Silly boy. You don't yell "heads up everyone!," you yell "Terrorist!"
That way there's no question about your motives (you are saving these people from an attack), and if someone should accidentally be hit by debris, it's all in the name of security.
Exactly 328.000 feet, not 1 inch more (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know why, but news organizations everywhere do this and it makes me want to stab them over and over with a fondue fork. Somebody said it had a range of about 100 m. Somebody else converted it to feet, without any thought that this was an approximate measurement. About 100 m is about 300 feet, or maybe about 350 feet, but it is not 328 feet.
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or at least say 100 yards.
Re:Exactly 328.000 feet, not 1 inch more (Score:4, Insightful)
Significant figures is probably too deep a concept to be taught to journalist majors.
Ditto for the fact that using yards for meters would be better for approximate conversions.
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It goes the other way, too. I am so frustrated when 'a mile down the road' gets translated to literally 1.61 km. Just say one and a half, dammit.
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That's why body temperature is 98.6 degrees F. It was 37 C in the original study, which correctly reported error bars. But it showed up in US medical texts as 98.6 and now moms freak out if their precious snowflake is 99.0.
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To be fair though, those same moms would freak out if their precious snowflake was 37.2 degrees C when they should only be 37 degrees C.
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[Citation needed]
When NIST [nist.gov] drops the degrees from degrees Celsius then so will I. Until then, I'll still continue to refer to individual temperatures on the Celsius scale as degrees Celsius.
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My wife and I freaked out when our youngest hit 99, but we had good reason. He's had a ton of febrile seizures - including one where he turned grey, stopped breathing and didn't start up again until after he had rescue breaths administered. (Scariest moment of my life, by the way.) We knew his body temperature tended on the low side so 99 meant he was beginning to get a fever and we needed to act fast to make sure he didn't experience another seizure.
Re: Exactly 328.000 feet, not 1 inch more (Score:2)
My wife and I freaked out when our youngest hit 99
By any chance is his name Benjamin Button? :)
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Somebody said it had a range of about 100 m. Somebody else converted it to feet, without any thought that this was an approximate measurement. About 100 m is about 300 feet, or maybe about 350 feet, but it is not 328 feet.
Have to remove mod point and want to point out something...
Approximation is nice, but you are a bit off in number. What you said is that 1 yard is approximately equal to 1 meter. That's about 10% off. 1 meter is longer than 1 yard. Now let's see. 1 yard is 3 feet. 1 foot is 12 inches. 1 inch is around 2.54 cm. So 100 meter would be around 328 feet ((10000/2.54) / 12).
TFA said it is about 100m which is already an approximation. If you approximate an approximation, it could lead to something difference (tend
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Actually, 1 inch is exactly 2.54 cm, according to the NIST.
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A 10% difference is one more digit of precision, which isn't warranted here.
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A 10% difference is one more digit of precision, which isn't warranted here.
Depends on what you are talking about. In other words, sometimes the ACTUAL NUMBER is MORE important that the RATIO, and vice versa. Also, for some people, actual number is more important than ratio, and vice versa. In this case, to me, 28 feet are quite significant in distance compared to 300 feet.
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Yes, but you don't know whether that 28 feet are real or not. 300 feet is about 90m, and if I were thinking "about 75-125m", I'd likely express it as about 100m, which includes 90m. 330 feet would imply about 97-103m, which may be a lot more precise than is warranted. If it turned out that the range is 90m, it wouldn't surprise the person who read "about 100m", while it would surprise the person who read "about 330 feet".
Round numbers typically don't translate well between measuring systems.
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"Journalists" do this because they think the American public is too stupid to use metric so everything needs to be converted to imperial. They Google "how many feet is 100 meters", get 328.084 feet, chop off the decimal (because Americans are too stupid for decimal places too), and report this as the exact distance.
By the way, I use the quotes around the word journalists because people who do this aren't real journalists. Sadly, real journalists are becoming rarer and rarer. Most people who call themselv
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"Journalists" do this because they think the American public is too stupid to use metric so everything needs to be converted to imperial. They Google "how many feet is 100 meters", get 328.084 feet, chop off the decimal (because Americans are too stupid for decimal places too), and report this as the exact distance.
By the way, I use the quotes around the word journalists because people who do this aren't real journalists. Sadly, real journalists are becoming rarer and rarer. Most people who call themselves journalists today just take a press release or AP/Reuters wire story, tweak a few words, and publish it. These "journalists" are like script kiddies who download a program, point it at a website, break in, and declare themselves an uber hacker. They might call themselves something (hacker/journalist), but their lack of actual skills shows that they really aren't what they say they are.
Americans are quite intelligent. We learn both the metric and the old imperial system. We don't dumb our brains down to only learn a system based on 10's. Why did you have to google this number when most Americans can do it in their head?
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Two things:
1) I'm American as well. I learned both systems, but the Imperial system is the one used in day-to-day life so it's easy for adults to forget the metric units unless they use them consistently. (e.g. They work as a physicist and constantly reference units in metric.) Honestly, I don't remember most Imperial->Metric conversions by heart so I use Google to refresh my memory whenever I need to.
2) My comment was about journalists assuming that Americans would be baffled by metric units. Even i
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328.083989.........
because math!!!
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Do you know how amazingly mad I'd be if I fired this and the drone ended up being 328.09 feet away?
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I would be super pissed, especially if it only went up 99 meters
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Why do you have a Fondue fork?
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I'd say the best approximation is either 110 yards, or 325 feet (yes, they're different). 110 yards has about the right mount of significance from a decimal point of view. 325 looks like a round number, much more so than either 320 or 330.
Re: Exactly 328.000 feet, not 1 inch more (Score:2)
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No you're still wrong. About 100m is ABOUT 328 feet. Yes 300ft is a good round approximation but when you are nick picking estimations, its best to have equivalent figures, not arbitrarily subtract 10% because it makes a nice even number.
You make the mistake of inflating significant figures. About 100 m really only has a single significant digit. By converting to feet, take care not to introduce more significant figures. 328 feet implies a higher precision. Much higher, both because you increase the significant number of digits from 1 to 3, and also because a foot is a higher precision measurement in the first place.
"About 330 feet" is better, but "about 300-350 feet" might be a far more better translation of the meaning, by not introd
The FAA doesn't like such things (Score:4, Insightful)
Lowrider jumping style. (Score:1)
I just wonder when they will make the drone equivalent of a lowrider with extra bouncing capability to counter this...
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It's a little stronger than "doesn't like", it's against federal law.
18 USC ss 32
(a) Whoever willfully
(1) sets fire to, damages, destroys, disables, or wrecks any aircraft in the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States or any civil aircraft used, operated, or employed in interstate, overseas, or foreign air commerce; ...shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years or both.
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I don't think many consumer-grade drones are going to be "employed in interstate, overseas, or foreign air commerce".
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link?
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18 U.S. Code ss 32 - Destruction of aircraft or aircraft facilities
https://www.law.cornell.edu/us... [cornell.edu]
Amazing but... (Score:3)
my drone's better than your drone (Score:1)
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police don't face manslaughter charges for collateral damage when stopping crime. ask any car crash victim during a high speed chase.
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police don't face manslaughter charges for collateral damage when stopping crime. ask any car crash victim during a high speed chase.
In my country they do.
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police don't face manslaughter charges for collateral damage when stopping crime. ask any car crash victim during a high speed chase.
They do however face civil litigation, and many (if not most) states nowadays require police to back off of a high-speed chase if there is a significant danger of harm to innocent bystanders.
Now to have drones that can kill this thing. (Score:2)
Then have countermeasures available to deflect the anti-drone measure.
If caught, record and remotely save footage that helps identify the vandal who decided to take down a drone.
"Once captured it can be..." (Score:3)
"Once captured it can be..." reprogrammed and armed with explosives, in order to carry out a different mission than its owner intended. Yay, for capture devices!
Useless against a swarm of cheap "wingman" drones. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Depends on what you are trying to block. This will not work in a military situation with thousands of small drones, sure, but maybe it's not their market.
This seems more targeted at "peeping" drones, i.e. a single individual (or a few people) having a single drone each with some video equipment. So a few rather big, rather expensive drones. It might work.
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"required."
I'm not sure that word means what you think it means.
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do i know about it know?
Significant digits (Score:2, Redundant)
The system, which has a range of 328 feet
Wow, that's quite specific.
I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that 328 feet is what you get if you convert 100 metres to stoopid.
Add a sensor and dodge (Score:2)
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Small problem with that -
The drone typically has a (very) finite carrying capacity. Folks on the ground are under no such limitations.
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I was thinking a gimballed green gas jet at the bottom of the chassis for a nice vertical boost to get the vehicle out of the way. I wonder if you'd be able to recover a stable flight path after that though? This is fun, it's like a civilian arms race.
Parachute? (Score:2)
Why a parachute if all they're going to do is figure out who the idiot is that was flying the drone? You don't need to have the drone be in good condition to figure out who owns it.
If the drone happens to break as the result of its fall then maybe the idiot shouldn't have had the drone in the area in the first place.
But I'm sure someone will give an excuse why personal responsibility doesn't enter into the equation.
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Most small UAS platforms run on highly energetic and notoriously fragile LiPo batteries. Falling from even a few meters can be enough to damage them and potentially start a fire that can seriously damage (and even mostly consume) the device in question. If the operator is compliant with the FAA's silly new rules and has his Super Official No Really I Didn't Write Someone Else's On It FAA Registration Number written
If only it were a bit smaller... (Score:1)
It would be better... (Score:2)
to have something that locates/goes after the transmitter, not the drone.
Let the drone arms race begin (Score:2)
Next will be an anti drone-bazooka device.
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