Such a remote-ID system would not only reveal the location of the drone itself it would also locate the operator, making it straightforward for authorities to intervene when necessary. Instead, the industry’s emphasis is on devising a system that would allow drones to be remotely identified. “Then you’d have serious concerns about hacking.” “That doesn’t seem like a good solution,” says Brendan Schulman, vice president of policy and legal affairs for DJI, the world’s leading drone manufacturer. Why not just ask the drone manufacturers to supply the information needed for authorities to commandeer a wayward drone? These manufacturers could even be required to build in “back doors” that would allow authorities to take over control at the flick of a switch. But it could address the vast majority of incidents. #Small drone fullThis strategy wouldn’t work for custom-made drones, or ones under full autonomous control. “In the domestic context, you can’t have a big jammer stomping on the spectrum.” He and his colleagues have reverse-engineered many commercial drones to figure out the proprietary protocols they use for telemetry and to transmit commands so that SkySafe’s equipment can wrest control of a rogue drone from its operator. “We’re entirely RF based,” says Grant Jordan, CEO of SkySafe. Such dramatic countermeasures entail some obvious risks, which is why San Diego–based SkySafe, for one, is pursuing a safer approach: Take control over the drone and force it to land or fly back to the operator. Strategies include jamming the drone’s control signals, targeting it with bazooka-like contraptions that throw nets, chasing it down and capturing it with larger drones, loosing trained raptors to attack it, and even using powerful solid-state lasers to burn it out of the sky. Once a drone has been spotted flying someplace it shouldn’t be, there are all sorts of ways to neutralize it-at least in theory. And that’s just what is often done-tracking the drones with both radar and cameras. How can authorities deal with that? “The right answer is to put a camera on it to tell me whether it’s a hawk or a drone,” says Driscoll. Of course, a bird circling in a thermal updraft and a fixed-wing drone won’t produce such readily apparent differences in their radar signatures. Echodyne’s system operates in the K-band, with frequencies around 24 gigahertz, and uses a metamaterials-based phased-array radar, which has beams that can be electronically focused and steered. The signals recorded by the right radar will register these differences. Their overall trajectories as they fly through the air are also different. Photo: John Stillwell/PA/Getty Imagesīirds flap their wings at a rate of a few hertz, whereas multicopters use propellers spinning at thousands of rotations per minute. Agility in the air: The ability to switch directions nimbly or to perform tricks makes for an easier and more entertaining flight experience.Where’s That Drone?: Officials placed counter-UAS technology on the roof of London’s Gatwick Airport last December after drones were spotted in the area.
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