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Catching drones gone rogue — Parallax Forums

Catching drones gone rogue

Bob Lawrence (VE1RLL)Bob Lawrence (VE1RLL) Posts: 1,720
edited 2016-04-27 16:09 in General Discussion

https://www.elektormagazine.com/news/catching-drones-gone-rogue?utm_source=Elektor+International+(English)&utm_campaign=204738bc9a-Elektor_e_zine_158_1_21_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_23bd160f48-204738bc9a-234065433&mc_cid=204738bc9a&mc_eid=b3483591d2

Catching drones gone rogue


Catching drones gone rogue
The proliferation of consumer-grade drones has placed a new tool in the hands of people with mischievous intent. Unmanned aerial vehicles can be used to transport dangerous payloads such as explosives, disrupt air traffic or to invade private spaces. Last week a man in the United States was convicted for attempting to smuggle contraband into a Maryland state prison with the use of a drone.

To be able to defend against drones gone rogue, Dr. Mohammad Rastgaar, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Michigan Technological University, and his team developed a drone that can catch renegade drones with a net. The idea came to him when he heard snipers were deployed during the FIFA World Cup to shoot down drones should they pose a threat to the public.

“I thought, ‘If the threat is a drone, you really don’t want to shoot it down—it might contain explosives and blow up. What you want to do is catch it and get it out of there’”, Rastgaar told Michigan Tech News.

Rastgaar's Drone-Catcher, which can be operated by a pilot on the ground or function autonomously, chases the intruding drone and shoots out a wide net to ensnare it. “What makes this unique is that the net is attached to our catcher, so you can retrieve the rogue drone or drop it in a designated, secure area,” Rastgaar said. “It’s like robotic falconry.”


Comments

  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2016-01-22 15:22
    Brilliant!

    Finally something to make even football interesting. Who is going to be watching football when there is a drone war going on overhead?

    :)
  • ercoerco Posts: 20,256
    Awesome. Nets are great against anything with rotating props, wheels, weapons. I have used them numerous times in our 'Terminator' contests. A PITA to test and use but if you hit the target, it's game over for them. I have used fishnets, mesh hammocks and even homemade nets. Most of mine were "launched" like this one, but the only one I have video of is below. Clumsy but it always worked when I hit the target! Definitely a first strike weapon. Jump to 3 minutes.

  • Hey look - there's a drone over that crowd, and that's not safe! Let's send up an even heavier drone and start shooting things! Smart people aren't very smart sometimes. :-/
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    Smart people are very smart. They know it's not going to be any use as much as we do. It's fun to do and they get paid for it. This demo is surely worth a grant proposal or two. Brilliant.



  • "Rogue" drones are not always over crowds. We've had major problems with drones interfering with aerial firefighting operations, for example. For situations like that, this idea might work very well. Even if a drone were over a crowd, when the operator retrieves it, it might then be intercepted in a safe area. I think this is a great idea.
  • ercoerco Posts: 20,256
    You really don't need to fire the net. As my video showed, you can just hang a net down and passively move it into the drone. Spinning props will do the rest. Two drones could work together to hold the net open, with or without a spreader bar between them. A single drone could carry a net on a spreader bar too, but orienting properly (broadside to target) might be problematic.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2016-01-23 20:39
    Yes, but isn't this like the doomed Starwars Defence Initiative?

    No matter what clever stuff you come up with to catch incoming trouble. The incoming trouble can always overload the system cheaper than you can build the system to catch it.

    See history of the Second World War etc, etc....


  • Heater. wrote: »
    Yes, but isn't this like the doomed Starwars Defence Initiative?

    No matter what clever stuff you come up with to catch incoming trouble. The incoming trouble can always overload the system cheaper than you can build the system to catch it.

    See history of the Second World War etc, etc....
    .
    Anti-Virus software?
    .

  • Fortunately, the problematic drone operators typically won't have the resources of a state, and are usually just interested in getting some video. I doubt we'd see swarms of drones sent up as decoys so that one or two can get the desired shots.
    Heater. wrote: »
    Yes, but isn't this like the doomed Starwars Defence Initiative?

    No matter what clever stuff you come up with to catch incoming trouble. The incoming trouble can always overload the system cheaper than you can build the system to catch it.

    See history of the Second World War etc, etc....


  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    jones,

    I hope you are right.

    The Twin Towers thing demonstrated that you don't need much in the way of resources to cause a lot of grief.
  • Agreed, Heater, but I don't think there's any "one-size-fits-all" solution. A lot of the problems currently arising from drone use are by operators who don't have nefarious intent, but just want video enough to ignore rules and really believe that what they're doing is harmless. I think this idea offers one possible solution to that sort of drone use.

    Someone trying to carry out a terrorist attack with drones presents a different sort of problem, and the potential damage from such use justifies not only more drastic countermeasures, but also much larger development expenditures. I know the military has been working on laser weapons for taking out small drones, and no doubt other sorts of weapons we haven't heard about. As we've seen with other sorts of terrorist attacks such as the shootings in San Bernardino, it's probably impossible to stop everything. Incidentally, I was about a km up the street from that attack when it happened. Had I been asked about the likelihood of a terrorist attack in a city like San Bernardino, I think I'd have laughed. Not any more. Your point is well taken.
  • It is a good solution to catch drones carrying explosive device through net. However, not all drones that we see in the sky is carrying explosive device. In addition, that solution cannot stop terrorist attack in long term.
  • This is not about terrorist attacks with drones, this is about one drone catching the other in flight, a technically well done project.

    I do not want to go into politics, but this obsession with terrorist attacks slowly gets on my nerve.

    Even if I would employ @erco to help me with a flame thrower on a Parallax Quad, how much damage could I do to a small town, compared to say a Leopard II or a 747?

    The main problem with them UAVs is the invasion of privacy. And catching them with a net leaves you with way more usable parts as shooting them down with a shotgun.

    just my 2 cents.

    Mike
  • potatoheadpotatohead Posts: 10,261
    edited 2016-01-25 07:13
    Plus, when you capture, you got their stuff! :)

    Good for wall of shame, etc...

  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2016-01-25 17:58
    msrobots,
    ...catching them with a net leaves you with way more usable parts...
    A very good point.
  • msrobots wrote: »
    I do not want to go into politics, but this obsession with terrorist attacks slowly gets on my nerve.

    Obsession? Not really. Just a realization that some technological developments make it easier for small numbers of people to hurt large numbers of people. Because of that, we are forced to consider such things.
  • ercoerco Posts: 20,256
    Good points by all.

    Now are we talking rogue drones or rogue jones? :)
  • jones wrote: »
    msrobots wrote: »
    I do not want to go into politics, but this obsession with terrorist attacks slowly gets on my nerve.

    Obsession? Not really. Just a realization that some technological developments make it easier for small numbers of people to hurt large numbers of people. Because of that, we are forced to consider such things.

    Yes, but to hurt a large number of people you will for sure not use a quad copter with such small payload.

    To tell the truth 'drones' are way more dangerous to terrorists then terrorist with quad copter are to me. I do just not like the invasion of privacy them UAVs with cameras are able to do.

    One shipping container with some 'simple' thermonuclear device going into a US Harbor on one of them thousands of ships docking in the US each week frightens me way more then some guy with a quad copter. And ships can carry a lot of weight in opposite to private own-able UAVs.

    I am not sure about this but I think it is quite possible to remote control a Cessna, for example. Or even a Airbus or Boing Passenger Airplane. Now you have 'some' payload. But a Quad Copter? Does not make sense to me.

    So regulating UAVs of quite small size BECAUSE of a terrorist thread is what I would call Obsession.

    Regulating the implication of there use for privacy reasons or safety reasons DOES make sense to me.

    Just my 2 cents.

    Mike




  • msrobots wrote: »
    Yes, but to hurt a large number of people you will for sure not use a quad copter with such small payload.

    So regulating UAVs of quite small size BECAUSE of a terrorist thread is what I would call Obsession.
    I don't see anywhere in this thread where someone was suggesting that drones be regulated because they might be used for some attack. I think that's an extrapolation. If there's an obsession that runs through the threads about drones, it might be about regulations.

    As for how drones might be used to carry out some attack, I don't think it's particularly responsible to be posting ideas, but I can think of a few. However, that wasn't the point of the thread nor the point of my posts. They were only about whether or not the video depicted a method that might be useful in some circumstances for taking down a troublesome drone.

  • erco wrote: »
    ...rogue jones? :)
    ???

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