Police Train Eagles to Take Down Drones on Sight

Eagles Trained to Bring Unmanned Drones Down in Emergency

The Dutch National Police force has revealed that it would be training eagles in bringing down unmanned drones in emergency cases. The purpose is to disable a drone which may for instance, tend to wander in the airspace of a city centre or an airport or without the danger of falling from the sky and on anyone below.

Development of anti-drone UAV are also taking place though it presently seems to be simpler and cheaper in the use of nature’s greatest hunters instead of one of humanity’s lest dependable robots to do the task. It is reported that the Dutch police will be working with a company known as `Guard From Above’, or a translation of that name for training of the eagles, a firm in The Hague who tend to specialize in training birds of prey for private security, in helping to protect the skies from rogue drones.

With the training, the eagle tends to recognise the drones as prey which they disable with the claws. Thereafter the eagle deposits the drone in a space which is distanced from civilians. A specific example, which was posted to YouTube, the eagle picks out a DJI model and does it quite effectively.

Drones Getting Cheaper & Accessible

So far, the project seems to be under trail with the police assessing if they want a full fleet of drone busting birds of prey. The police have also been working on other systems to take the drone out from the sky including hacking the drone as well as just using a net or the combination of both.

However, the potential of the eagle tends to provide more flexibility once the machine is recovered. Eagles in the wild have portrayed a natural inclination in attacking drones on sight as hawks, rams and chimps and thus it may not be the most awful idea if the safety of the animal can be assured.

Drones are getting cheaper and much more accessible, increasing the apprehension that they could be utilised by criminals or terrorist groups. Taking this into consideration, recently the Japanese police force has announced that they would organise a battalion of anti-drone officers and disable drones.

Animal Instinct of Bird of Prey – Exceptional

The Netherland’s Police had mentioned in a statement that `in future, drones would be used progressively and hence it would increase the number of incidents regarding drones and could also be utilised for criminal purposes. The security firm state that the technique used is not harmful to the birds and is not dangerous than the scraps they get into with prey in the wild.

 Their feet are heavily scaled to precisely protect them from sharp bites, scratches and slashes. Nonetheless, the company has been working with the Dutch Organization for Applied Scientific Research to evaluate whether the propellers of the drone tend to affect the claws of the bird. `Guards from Above’ had mentioned in a press release that they used birds’ natural hunting instincts to intercept drones and this was done safely, accurately and quickly.

The animal instinct of a bird of prey is exceptional and capable of overpowering fast-moving prey. At times the solution to a hypermodern problem is more obvious than one might imagine.

Pilotless Drone to Transport Humans

Autonomous Aerial Vehicle - EHang

One of the transport innovations which had been on display at the CES tech show in Las Vegas was a human-carrying drone. Announced by Chinese company the so-called EHang, the company’s new Autonomous Aerial Vehicle – AAV is a large scale drone which has been designed to separately fly people from one point to another.

The personal minicopter is not operated through manual controls and the passenger can choose a point on a map to travel to a particular place. The device is said to be costing more than $200,000 and could be illegal to ride in public in several countries.Huazhi Hu, CEO of Ehang had started designing the one seater electric drone a couple of years back after two of his pilots had been killed in plane crashes. He had decided that people required a short-to-medium-distance personal air transport where a pilot’s license would not be needed and that took off most of the danger of out of low-altitude flight.

The notion of creating the Chinese built-184 is that users could get to power it and select their destination using a 12-inch touchscreen tablet display and then use the `take-off’ button. The automated flight systems of the drone will then take over from here, handling task like communication with air traffic control together with the other aircrafts, avoid obstacles and navigate.

Safe/Smartest -FailSafe System

It will tend to use the fastest and the safest route between its current place and its destination. Besides being safest, the company has described it as the smartest low altitude autonomous aerial vehicle on the market. The Failsafe system will apparently take control in case of any malfunctions and the passenger would also get the drone to stop and hover in place if required.

If one tends to travel short distance often, this is appropriate option to reduce the strain of traffic and transport through air. One could hop into the only passenger vehicle and go up and away to their choice of destination.

According to EHang, passengers only need to sit back and permit the software and machine to do the work where no piloting or license is needed and flights have now become very easy. EHang also envisages the 184 for shipping medical transport and much more.

Eight Propellers/Four Arms

The craft comprises of eight propellers together with four arms which is created with reinforcements in place should a component tend to fail. EHang has also mentioned that while one is in the air and attacked by a bird, the 184 tends to take suitable action.

Should anyone attempt to hack the 184, the oversized drone is built with encryption which means that one need not worry about someone despicable sending you travelling into a building. The 184 is quite small for an aerial transportation which tends to weight around 440 pounds having a rated load capacity of 220 pounds.

However, the EHang 184 death machine does not seem to be powerful enough to carry across any sort of distance. EHang states that it promises limitless possibilities and would influence the way one tends to travel in profound ways.

Drone Lands on Moving Car in Germany

Drone Trained to Land on Moving Vehicle

Roboticists in Germany have trained a drone to land itself on a moving vehicle. Researchers from German Aerospace Centre – DLR have established their safely landing aircraft on a car which had been fitted with a net travelling at around 75 km/h. They have recommended that the technology can be adapted to enable unmanned aircraft to be built without wheels to permit them to stay airborne for a longer time. The team were capable of programming the drone in identifying a QR code located on the roof of the car and land itself by utilising the QR code as an anchor.

Though remarkable as a visual display, the team are anticipating that by developing a simple as well as an effective piece of software, they could help the next-generation of drone which would not need conventional runways.

The system has been designed for civil application in the field of remote sensing and communication and can be applied to ultra-light solar-powered aircraft which tends to match conventional satellite system at the time of flying in the stratosphere. In case of a disaster, it could support crisis management via live situations reports, replace failed communications networks or provide data on climate change.

No Landing Gear – Increase Cargo Ability

Excluding the landing gear tends to increase the cargo ability of a solar powered aircraft which in turn develops more space for scientific instruments. Moreover, the system also makes landing easy in adverse weather conditions inclusive of crosswinds or wind gusts.

The system could offer a new means of recovering drone aircraft when on the run and without the need of bulky landing gear. To pull off the stunt they had fitted an Audi with a specially adapted roof rack which tends to feature an elastic net of 13 by 16 feet passed through it wherein the net had been designed to accommodate the 44llbs drone with a 10 feet wingspan, to stop it from banging and damaging the roof of the car.

For the purpose of safe landing of the drone on the moving car, the engineers had designed a tracking system which enabled the drone to read the optical markets on the landing platform which enabled the drone to synchronise automatically, its speed with that of the car.

Set of Computer Algorithms Used

Moreover it also supported the aircraft to target the appropriate landing spot with an accuracy of 20 inches. To help in landing gently on the bouncy platform, a set of computer algorithms was used. The experiment carried out at Mindelheim-Mattsies airfield in Bavaria had utilised a human driver to control the car, with instructions delivered by the computer in charge of the landing process.

In the near future, an autonomous drone with self-driving car can communicate with each other for landing without human involvement. However, the system had originally been developed to enable the aircraft to touch down without the need of landing gear.

This could be convenient in space wherein the solar planes soaring between stratosphere and satellites, around 12 miles above Earth could carry additional scientific instruments together with communication gear. This could probably lead to new means of landing helicopters for instance in stormy conditions.

Crowdfunding a Drone That Takes Selfies

World’s Safest Drone by Fleye

The world’s safest drone by Fleye is made by two Belgian founders wherein the drone is the size of a soccer ball with its propellers on the inner side which is encased by a shell. Most of the drones in the market tend to have their propellers exposed. The CEO of Fleye, Laurent Eschenauer, had informed CNBC at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in London, recently that if they were going to have autonomous flying robots around, they need to make them safe’.

The company had raised around half of its 175,000 euro so far, funding goal on Kickstarter with 38 days left. The starting price is 599 euros for one of the drones. Co-founders are now opening up the operating system of Linus for the drone to run on it, so that the developers may develop apps for it and are expecting to launch the device by April 2016.

The drone is controlled through an Android or iOS smartphone and is equipped with some pre-programmed functions like when a user tends to click the selfie control; the drone autonomously tends to move to position itself to take a picture of the user.

Supports Computer Vision Library OpenCV

The main invention of Fleye is its exceptional spherical design where all the moving parts seems to be sheltered which means that one can be hold, touch, push and bump into Fleye without much trouble of being injured. It also means that while bumping into something, Fleye could be more robust.

One does not need piloting skill to control the drone but just select a flying camera mode, - selfie, panorama, virtual tripod etc. andwatch the live video stream focusing on capturing photos and videos. If one intends to be in manual control, you could use the virtual gamepad or hook a Bluetooth gamepad to the smartphone. Fleye tends to have a powerful on-board computer like the latest smartphone which is dual-core ARM A9, with hardware accelerated video encoding, together with two GPUs, 512MB of RAM and runs on Linux.

Moreover it also supports Computer vision library OpenCV which means that Fleye has the capacity of being programmed to execute mission autonomously, responding to what it tends to see in the environment.

Operating from Logistic to Disaster Recovery

The main anxiety for regulators looking at drones after various high profile occurrences, is safety. A drone had crashed on the lawn of the White House, earlier this year and at a music concert, pop star Enrique Iglesias had reached out to grab a drone which was filming and had sliced open his finger.

 Eschenauer has been betting on a world wherein drone would become universal, operating in areas from logistics to disaster recovery as well as roaming around the office. A camera has been attached on the top for the drones to recognize the world around and to take decisions and also for the people to take videos and photos. However, the company tends to find itself in a competitive space against bigger manufacturers with deeper pockets.

The Chinese drone maker DJI had raised around $75 million this year which was reportedly valued at $10 billion, offering drones for professional filmmakers and hobbyists. Eschenauer has admitted that Fleye will not be able of taking on the recognized players but has stated that the company has made its own niche. He has commented that that they have been carving out their own niche which is proximity. If one desires to capture a film at a wedding or in an industrial plant, one would not use the big drone with big propellers, especially if it tends to becomes autonomous’.

Tokyo Police are Using Drones with Nets to Catch Other Drones

 

Camera Equipped Drones – Capture Suspicious Drone

Exclusive fleet of interceptor drones designed to chase and capture suspicious looking drones in nets flying over sensitive areas in the midst of concern for the safety of the prime minister, has been introduced by Tokyo’s police force. The riot police would be controlling the camera-equipped interceptor drones in chasing private drones which may be spying on buildings including the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe’s office and trap them in large nets before reaching back to the ground.

 Those in control of the force drone would first caution the operator of the suspicious drone to cease the flight before tracking them. In April, a four propeller drone with trace amounts of radioactive caesium was seized on the top of the prime minister’s office which raised terror concerns in the capital. Police had informed that radioactivity levels were only at a maximum of 1 microsievert of gamma rays per hour, which is a level that is not harmful to humans.

Illegal to Pilot Drones in Certain Area in Japan

Yoshihide Suga, the chief cabinet secretary had mentioned in a press conference that `the situation concerns the centre of the Japanese government, the prime minister’s office and are taking every essential measure inclusive of a detailed investigation by police’. Later on, a man had been arrested.

The drones of the police force measures about one metre in diameter while the net measures two metres by three meters which is suspended below the body of the interceptor. The drones will only take to the air when an unlawful drone is spotted and the police officers on the ground will utilise loudspeakers in an effort to warn the drone’s controller to evacuate the area.

The net to catch other quadcopters was eventually decided, as there would be less chance of an aircraft falling from the sky and injure civilians. The force intends to start utilising them later this month before rolling the enterprise out more broadly in February. It is illegal to pilot drones over certain areas in Japan, including airports, over roads or 150 meters above the land.

Drones – Most contentious Creation of Technology

Unmanned aerial vehicles or drones are the most contentious creations of technology and though the opportunity that they provide for the retail industry like Amazon’s delivery services is remarkable, there is a concern over safety, warfare as well as surveillance which tend to continue blocking their adoption in the mainstream utilisation. Solar powered drones had been developed by Facebook to fly over the UK in order to plug gaps in mobile coverage offering a boost to `not spot’ areas of the country which are yet without mobile internet.

As per reports from The Asahi Shimbun andthe Asian Review, a drone had been first deployed on a trial basis from mid-December and a more complete operation would then be introduced later in the year. The drone squads would provide protection for some of the most sensitive areas in the city comprising of the Imperial Palace, the National Diet, where the Japan’s parliament meet besides the office of the prime minister.

 Japan’s police force may be the first law enforcement agencies in introducing countermeasures for the consumer drones, though several other government as well as commercial agencies having been considering the same in the West.