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This is a copy-paste from what I posted on reddit in regards to the same kind of thing. Really this entire concept is stupid. Not only are higher-end quadcopte

by Vexs 10y ago

This is a copy-paste from what I posted on reddit in regards to the same kind of thing. Really this entire concept is stupid. Not only are higher-end quadcopters unimaginably acrobatic, to the point where a skilled pilot could easily outfly a bird, but these things are literally flying lawnmowers. Go on /r/Multicopter or any other multirotor forum, there are loads of people that have been sliced all over their arms, and if you dig further, cuts down to the bone in some cases. Given the brittle, hollow nature of bird bones, well. (maybe eagle/falcon legs are different tho?) Seriously, if I was a falconer I would never consent to this. As for people suggesting they use cords or something to tangle the props up, that's really not an impossible problem either, people have been putting mesh cages over their props to fly them safely indoors for some time now, plus if you only stop one prop the quad becomes extremely violent in it's movements, pitching and rolling all over the damn place, which again, will probably at the very least hurt the bird quite a lot. Plus, if you were using quads for nefarious purposes, if that bird catches your quad you're not gonna give up and call it a day, more likely you'll push the throttle to max, which again, will cause that bird quite a lot of harm. If I were the aforementioned falconer, I would make sure the pilot cut the motors immediately before the eagle caught it, as that's the only way this would ever be safe for anyone involved.

Terr_ 10y ago
I think a more fundamental problem is cost: Building one more explosive-drone is probably cheaper than raising and training one more bird, so an attacker would just send N+1 drones against N birds, and whichever drones detect interference can explode into shrapnel. > Given the brittle, hollow nature of bird bones Maybe they could make them little reinforced booties of kevlar and steel-sheathed talons? :P Over in the realm of sci-fi, its interesting to contemplate bird-safe EMP grenades, or a neural-tap that makes the birds part of a spotter/targeting system for ground-based lasers.
- mc32 10y ago
  They could also just use one of these[1] jamming devices to take down the drone. [1]http://newatlas.com/battelles-dronedefender-beam-gun-uavs/39885/ http://newatlas.com/battelles-dronedefender-beam-gun-uavs/39...
  - Vexs 10y ago
    I've seen this or other similar ideas a number of times, and I have no faith that they would work outside commercial copters- I mean, right off the bat, the jamming is more likely to explode any bombs than anything else- and the military already has anti-jamming technology, or you could just use a nonstandard frequency, which from what I understand would also circumvent any jamming. As far as I'm concerned, almost all anti-drone devices are complete shams.
  - ill0gicity 10y ago
    Control systems for drones typically run on 2.4GHz, but they don't have to. The 70cm band (433MHz typical) is available for people with amateur radio licenses (or people who don't care). There are also 3G chips (Particle Electron) that you can use to send telemetry commands if your drone has a GPS and a compatible auto-pilot flight controller. Getting a video signal back is normally done on 5.8GHz, but there is hardware readily available for 900MHz, 1.2GHz, 2.4GHz, and 3.3GHz. And if you're an enterprising fellow you can send the video on any frequency (NTSC or PAL). Basically, you can't block it all without serious collateral "damage". Edit: I've been building and flying drones for over two years, both FPV racing types and larger photography/videography platforms.
    - erelde 10y ago
      This is becoming a tad complicated and with a lots of steps involved for just bombing things isn't it? I mean Tony Stark could it in a cave, but could Joe Terrorist do it? ps: I shouldn't talk about the costs effectiveness of terror bombing, but it doesnt' seem like something those guys would do, car bombing seem like a "good" enough approach in general.
      - paganel 10y ago
        As a constant follower of the /r/syriancivilwar sub-reddit for the last 2 and a half years all I can say is that one should never under-estimate the technical capabilities and know-how of the other side, be they religious fundamentalists like ISIS or tha AQ-affiliated factions from outside Aleppo and from the province of Idlib. Judging by the many videos of ISIS in action thag I've seen I can say that they were pretty quick in using and mastering drones for their military purposes, along with satellite maps and (I think custom-made) tablet apps.
- palunon 10y ago
  >Building one more explosive-drone is probably cheaper than raising and training one more bird, so an attacker would just send N+1 drones against N birds I'm not sure terrorist organisations, people using drones to fly over restricted airspace (many french cities are), etc, have the same budget than western miltaries...
  - cm2187 10y ago
    Yeah but unless a VIP constantly travels with two trucks full of birds, N will always be a small number, even if the country can afford more.
  - lostlogin 10y ago
    For every terrorist organisation (whatever that means) that I can name, I can also name a nation that has funded them often western. Britain, USA, France, Israel and Russia come to mind. I'm sure others can be readily found.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- lloeki 10y ago
  > Maybe they could make them little reinforced booties of kevlar and steel-sheathed talons? :P From TFA: > "The military is designing mittens of leather and Kevlar, an anti-blast material, to protect their talons," Agence France-Presse reported.
- Vexs 10y ago
  Hell, I never even considered multiple quads. Look at how "prey" birds avoid falcons and eagles right now, flocks, or in a more cool fashion, murmurations, which in addition to being super cool, are also an effective defense against them- and intel's swarming technology could be a downright prefect representation of the same idea.
- KineticLensman 10y ago
  Another cheap defence for the drone is simply to change direction or altitude radically when an appropriate sensor detects an incoming eagle. The eagle is in a dive and has limited maneuverability. Or, if the eagle does grab you, simply explode (as already stated elsewhere) and take out the defence, while one of your swarm buddies completes the mission.
  - i_feel_great 10y ago
    Even better, use cheap drones to kill the birds with explosives say, leaving your mission-critical drone to do its job.
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      With decent propellers, you won't even need explosives if the bird tries to catch it - so simply use decoy drones, carrying random junk of mass equal to that of the bomb, just like decoys on MIRV payloads.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- bayesian_horse 10y ago
  The problem for terrorists is not the cost of drones, but to acquire the explosives. For that matter, the drones don't solve any problem real-world terrorists really have. They are usually discovered while planning attacks or acquiring weapons and explosives. Putting a bomb near a lot of people is comparatively easy.
  - dromen 10y ago
    Uhm... I don't think it's hard at all to acquire the materials to build a bomb. I'm not disputing it's still the hard part of planning a terrorist attack, still... A teenager can get a kilo of ammonium nitrate online for 10 dollars, at least where I live. Maybe ANFO bombs aren't that powerful, but those can't be the only easy options for DIY bombs. I don't really see how it's a useful priority to try to physically stop terrorist attacks. There obviously aren't that many people who successfully commit them (because the number of related deaths is tiny) and the talk of "well we're stopping a load of them you just don't know because it's classified", yeah... they say that, but why should I believe unqualified statements about other people's secrets? Why not focus on the factors that make people radicalize, and work on reducing those? I guess it makes shitty headlines compared to "Kevlar-coated military drone hunting eagles kick evil khaki-person ass".
    - learc83 10y ago
      Explosives that are powerfull enough to cause serious damage in quantities small enough to be carried by an off the shelf drone are much harder to acquire than ammonium nitrate. Also buying the large quantities of DIY explosive components needed to build large bombs will raise red flags.
botexpert 10y ago
Animals are, by law, treated as property, not sentient beings, so one dead bird is nothing in the realm of anthropocentric humanity. If it fulfills the purpose man has given it's enough of a justification not to take animal's wishes as morally relevant.
- jmknoll 10y ago
  Do you have a citation for that? As far as I understand it, the nature of animal sentience is a very widely debated subject. If you define sentience to mean "the ability to feel or perceive," then a wide array of animals are sentient. Look at any pet cat or dog to see a display of feelings like fear, excitement, or curiosity. If you take a more narrow definition of "being aware of one's own existence," I imagine you would still find a number of animals who fit into the category. An African Grey Parrot, while learning colors, asked what color his feathers were. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_(parrot); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_(parrot); I would imagine there is a strong likelihood that you would probably see similar levels of self-awareness from other animals if we had a better way of testing for it. After all, there's nothing so special about Humans and Parrots in particular, is there?
  - botexpert 10y ago
    Citation for what? Animals are by law treated as property. I just explained why someone would think of a solution as ridiculous as that. Parent points out that the solution is not practical but it's clearly demonstrated in the video that it is. Given that the world we live in is focused on human convenience, with gluttony based on non-human animal flesh, it's really hard to be surprised. When you have engineers making efficient assembly lines for slaughtering chickens, cows, pigs, all sentient, feeling animals, how is using eagles for fetching drones not the same act of dismissing animal's wishes as morally relevant, or starving dogs for finding truffles, or any human centered activity that risks the life and well being of another non-human animal?
- perfmode 10y ago
  advocating for ownership over beings, huh?
eaglawaway 10y ago
how much is an eagle and a trainer? that times 10 is easily within the pr budget of your average large military how much is an eagle and a trainer? that times 10 is easily within the pr budget of your average large military i not saying a poor animal being is being hurt in the blades of the drone for a military pr stunt rather, it's shown as victorious
memracom 10y ago
Predatory birds attack by dive-bombing. You won't see it coming even if you have an extra camera on the drome pointed upward. They also know how to dive out of the sun which means that they are invisible in the camera view. And their bones are irrelevant because the damage is done by their mass plus acceleration. Likely they are going to be flying with some kind of netting material that will tangle the blades as well. And birds, even trained ones, might be considered expendable. Not to mention that using birds does not mean that they will attack the drones. They might just find the drone and point out its position for a ground based missile or laser. And people fighting against terrorist whose goal is to kill and maim people might be willing to sacrifice a few trained birds to stop the terrorist acts from succeeding.
- owenversteeg 10y ago
  Missile? Laser? That's insane. As someone who's worked on UAVs quite a bit, the only thing I'd consider taking them out with - in a situation which necessitated it, like a terrorist attack - is guns. Laser systems would be completely unrealistic for this situation, and using missiles would be absolutely overkill. A predatory bird dive bombing a drone would also not be something I'd bet on. Sure, I have confidence they could evade traditional cameras. But once they hit the UAV, what happens? The bird would almost certainly be killed or maimed by the propellers, and the drone would fly fine. If the creators of the drone spent just $100 extra or so on decent propellers, the drone would easily survive the attack. Using birds with no extra weapons against drones would only work in case of extremely stupid drone creators, and would probably result in at least one seriously injured or killed bird per drone.
  - bayesian_horse 10y ago
    Apparently it works quite well, though.
  - seszett 10y ago
    An eagle like in this case is orders of magnitude more powerful than the kind of drone being talked about, though. Not armed military drones, obviously, but these are not the target. A mass of 4 kilograms or so diving at several hundred km/h will do a lot of damage, keep in mind these birds kill adult deers. They're also used to avoiding the dangerous parts of the animals they attack and fast bird vision gives them a better view of rotors than the indistinct blur humans see. At 10000 rpm or so, birds of prey should actually be able to follow the movement of blades. They also have more lifting power than most drones, which means they are absolutely able to wrestle them to the ground if the initial impact doesn't knock them off (especially since they will have a far better understanding of what's going on than the drone's operator). I am as tempted as anyone to think that I am smarter than professionals I read about in the news, but I'm pretty sure these guys have thought their experiment through.
bayesian_horse 10y ago
Apparently it works without serious injuries. I had the same initial reaction. The bird is apparently supposed to carry the whole drone (or at least try to), which also puts a limit on the size of drones. Bird's feet have a very tough hide. And these eagles seem to have leather cuffs. Also wild eagles have been known to go after drones with no problems...
- RealityVoid 10y ago
  They kind of relie on a certain type of frame so they can grab the drone. I have cut myself pretty badly with drone propellers, I think people underestimate how powerfull those things are. No chance eagles would be a good counter-measure.
  - palunon 10y ago
    >I have cut myself pretty badly with drone propellers On the other hand, can you kill a deer with your bare hands ?
    - RealityVoid 10y ago
      > On the other hand, can you kill a deer with your bare hands ? I don't know, never tried it. Maybe. But that is irrelevant to the matter at hand, an eagle would get fucked up by fast-spinning propellers no matter of its ability to kill a deer. They are just pieces of meat with bone through them, mo matter their speed and athletic ability. As to the drones itself, for carrying heavy loads most likey they would use and X8 design. I once had the nasty pleasure of flipping an X8 drone upside down and for some reason, don't remember why, lost control and propellers were spinning full throttle, upside down. As you can imagine, it was a spinning death-machine and the only clearance I had to grab it was an 10x10cm square right in the middle of the drone. It was terrifying, but managed to stop it. I can't imagine an eagle grabbing it anywhere without it getting messed up. As a side-note, a decent X8 mid-sized-lift drone can be custom buit for under 500E. I don't know how much an eagle would cost.
      - 10y ago
lumberingjack 10y ago
These birds take down full sized wolves. I think they will have a chance at immortalizing a drown. And it's a bird if it loses it's life and saved one human then so be it. Please don't post stuff from reddit it's full of idiots.
- pvaldes 10y ago
  We forget that raptors are protected species. In USA you can't even keep the dropped feathers of a bald eagle in your house. Is illegal without a very special permit. To kill and chop bald eagles with a drone would be symbolically an huge success and desirable goal for any terrorist. This birds can't be easily exported to France or other countries for its huge symbolic value In Europe is the same. To deliberately train a golden eagle to fly across a meat mincer would upset a lot of people sweating blood and tears 365 days/year for protecting predators. You would need to pass law exceptions for all EU and argue the convenience to do so. To use the highly endangered Eastern Imperial Eagles for this would be even worse and unforgivable. The trainer will be sued and will face a lot of legal issues. For Pete's sake, this is idiot! just use another drone for that!
  - palunon 10y ago
    They are being hatched specifically for this purpose. These aren't random eagles captured in the wild.
    - pvaldes 10y ago
      I hope so, because to capture protected species in the wild is a crime. In any case even if you can keep an endangered species in captivity in a few special cases, you still could not deliberately put in danger the life of those captive species, because is not a cool toy, is a protected species by both the european and also the french laws. It does not matter if hatched for this or for that. Is still illegal. You can't even let fly freely this species in a public space like a city without breaking the law. For USA see: The Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act (16 U.S.C. 668-668d) In European community "Member states shall prohibit, for species in Annex 1 (that includes Aquila pomarina, Aquila clanga, Aquila heliaca, Aquila adalberti, Aquila chrysaetos, Hieraaetus fasciatus and Hieraaetus pennatus among other species) the sale, transport for sale, keeping for sale and the offering for sale of live or dead birds and of any recognisable parts or derivatives of such birds". Also eggs. And of course to deliberately annoy or harm this species is strictly forbidden. See directive 2009/147/EC
EGreg 10y ago
I wonder, at which point do we get to MAVs that are so small and agile that a room full of 300 humans could not grab even one of 300 mavs even if they tried really hard. In other words every time the MAV sees something coming at it, it redirects is flight in microseconds to avoid it, like a fly. Imagine such swarms infiltrating any size crowd without ever getting caught. You could incapacitate a whole crowd via MAVs landing and causing electroshocks. Or administering a pathogen. http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2014/04/10/insects-fruit-flies-science-flight-animals/ http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2014/04/10/insects-frui...
sangnoir 10y ago
Are you questioning whether the military would hesitate to put the life and limb of birds at risk? I'm sure the training is as safe as it can be (just like for humans) but all bets are off in an actual hostile situation.

by Vexs 10y ago

Terr_ 10y ago

I think a more fundamental problem is cost: Building one more explosive-drone is probably cheaper than raising and training one more bird, so an attacker would just send N+1 drones against N birds, and whichever drones detect interference can explode into shrapnel. > Given the brittle, hollow nature of bird bones Maybe they could make them little reinforced booties of kevlar and steel-sheathed talons? :P Over in the realm of sci-fi, its interesting to contemplate bird-safe EMP grenades, or a neural-tap that makes the birds part of a spotter/targeting system for ground-based lasers.

mc32 10y ago
They could also just use one of these[1] jamming devices to take down the drone. [1]http://newatlas.com/battelles-dronedefender-beam-gun-uavs/39885/ http://newatlas.com/battelles-dronedefender-beam-gun-uavs/39...
- Vexs 10y ago
  I've seen this or other similar ideas a number of times, and I have no faith that they would work outside commercial copters- I mean, right off the bat, the jamming is more likely to explode any bombs than anything else- and the military already has anti-jamming technology, or you could just use a nonstandard frequency, which from what I understand would also circumvent any jamming. As far as I'm concerned, almost all anti-drone devices are complete shams.
- ill0gicity 10y ago
  Control systems for drones typically run on 2.4GHz, but they don't have to. The 70cm band (433MHz typical) is available for people with amateur radio licenses (or people who don't care). There are also 3G chips (Particle Electron) that you can use to send telemetry commands if your drone has a GPS and a compatible auto-pilot flight controller. Getting a video signal back is normally done on 5.8GHz, but there is hardware readily available for 900MHz, 1.2GHz, 2.4GHz, and 3.3GHz. And if you're an enterprising fellow you can send the video on any frequency (NTSC or PAL). Basically, you can't block it all without serious collateral "damage". Edit: I've been building and flying drones for over two years, both FPV racing types and larger photography/videography platforms.
  - erelde 10y ago
    This is becoming a tad complicated and with a lots of steps involved for just bombing things isn't it? I mean Tony Stark could it in a cave, but could Joe Terrorist do it? ps: I shouldn't talk about the costs effectiveness of terror bombing, but it doesnt' seem like something those guys would do, car bombing seem like a "good" enough approach in general.
    - paganel 10y ago
      As a constant follower of the /r/syriancivilwar sub-reddit for the last 2 and a half years all I can say is that one should never under-estimate the technical capabilities and know-how of the other side, be they religious fundamentalists like ISIS or tha AQ-affiliated factions from outside Aleppo and from the province of Idlib. Judging by the many videos of ISIS in action thag I've seen I can say that they were pretty quick in using and mastering drones for their military purposes, along with satellite maps and (I think custom-made) tablet apps.
palunon 10y ago
>Building one more explosive-drone is probably cheaper than raising and training one more bird, so an attacker would just send N+1 drones against N birds I'm not sure terrorist organisations, people using drones to fly over restricted airspace (many french cities are), etc, have the same budget than western miltaries...
- cm2187 10y ago
  Yeah but unless a VIP constantly travels with two trucks full of birds, N will always be a small number, even if the country can afford more.
- lostlogin 10y ago
  For every terrorist organisation (whatever that means) that I can name, I can also name a nation that has funded them often western. Britain, USA, France, Israel and Russia come to mind. I'm sure others can be readily found.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
lloeki 10y ago
> Maybe they could make them little reinforced booties of kevlar and steel-sheathed talons? :P From TFA: > "The military is designing mittens of leather and Kevlar, an anti-blast material, to protect their talons," Agence France-Presse reported.
Vexs 10y ago
Hell, I never even considered multiple quads. Look at how "prey" birds avoid falcons and eagles right now, flocks, or in a more cool fashion, murmurations, which in addition to being super cool, are also an effective defense against them- and intel's swarming technology could be a downright prefect representation of the same idea.
KineticLensman 10y ago
Another cheap defence for the drone is simply to change direction or altitude radically when an appropriate sensor detects an incoming eagle. The eagle is in a dive and has limited maneuverability. Or, if the eagle does grab you, simply explode (as already stated elsewhere) and take out the defence, while one of your swarm buddies completes the mission.
- i_feel_great 10y ago
  Even better, use cheap drones to kill the birds with explosives say, leaving your mission-critical drone to do its job.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    With decent propellers, you won't even need explosives if the bird tries to catch it - so simply use decoy drones, carrying random junk of mass equal to that of the bomb, just like decoys on MIRV payloads.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
bayesian_horse 10y ago
The problem for terrorists is not the cost of drones, but to acquire the explosives. For that matter, the drones don't solve any problem real-world terrorists really have. They are usually discovered while planning attacks or acquiring weapons and explosives. Putting a bomb near a lot of people is comparatively easy.
- dromen 10y ago
  Uhm... I don't think it's hard at all to acquire the materials to build a bomb. I'm not disputing it's still the hard part of planning a terrorist attack, still... A teenager can get a kilo of ammonium nitrate online for 10 dollars, at least where I live. Maybe ANFO bombs aren't that powerful, but those can't be the only easy options for DIY bombs. I don't really see how it's a useful priority to try to physically stop terrorist attacks. There obviously aren't that many people who successfully commit them (because the number of related deaths is tiny) and the talk of "well we're stopping a load of them you just don't know because it's classified", yeah... they say that, but why should I believe unqualified statements about other people's secrets? Why not focus on the factors that make people radicalize, and work on reducing those? I guess it makes shitty headlines compared to "Kevlar-coated military drone hunting eagles kick evil khaki-person ass".
  - learc83 10y ago
    Explosives that are powerfull enough to cause serious damage in quantities small enough to be carried by an off the shelf drone are much harder to acquire than ammonium nitrate. Also buying the large quantities of DIY explosive components needed to build large bombs will raise red flags.

botexpert 10y ago

Animals are, by law, treated as property, not sentient beings, so one dead bird is nothing in the realm of anthropocentric humanity. If it fulfills the purpose man has given it's enough of a justification not to take animal's wishes as morally relevant.

jmknoll 10y ago
Do you have a citation for that? As far as I understand it, the nature of animal sentience is a very widely debated subject. If you define sentience to mean "the ability to feel or perceive," then a wide array of animals are sentient. Look at any pet cat or dog to see a display of feelings like fear, excitement, or curiosity. If you take a more narrow definition of "being aware of one's own existence," I imagine you would still find a number of animals who fit into the category. An African Grey Parrot, while learning colors, asked what color his feathers were. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_(parrot); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_(parrot); I would imagine there is a strong likelihood that you would probably see similar levels of self-awareness from other animals if we had a better way of testing for it. After all, there's nothing so special about Humans and Parrots in particular, is there?
- botexpert 10y ago
  Citation for what? Animals are by law treated as property. I just explained why someone would think of a solution as ridiculous as that. Parent points out that the solution is not practical but it's clearly demonstrated in the video that it is. Given that the world we live in is focused on human convenience, with gluttony based on non-human animal flesh, it's really hard to be surprised. When you have engineers making efficient assembly lines for slaughtering chickens, cows, pigs, all sentient, feeling animals, how is using eagles for fetching drones not the same act of dismissing animal's wishes as morally relevant, or starving dogs for finding truffles, or any human centered activity that risks the life and well being of another non-human animal?
perfmode 10y ago
advocating for ownership over beings, huh?

eaglawaway 10y ago

how much is an eagle and a trainer? that times 10 is easily within the pr budget of your average large military how much is an eagle and a trainer? that times 10 is easily within the pr budget of your average large military i not saying a poor animal being is being hurt in the blades of the drone for a military pr stunt rather, it's shown as victorious

memracom 10y ago

Predatory birds attack by dive-bombing. You won't see it coming even if you have an extra camera on the drome pointed upward. They also know how to dive out of the sun which means that they are invisible in the camera view. And their bones are irrelevant because the damage is done by their mass plus acceleration. Likely they are going to be flying with some kind of netting material that will tangle the blades as well. And birds, even trained ones, might be considered expendable. Not to mention that using birds does not mean that they will attack the drones. They might just find the drone and point out its position for a ground based missile or laser. And people fighting against terrorist whose goal is to kill and maim people might be willing to sacrifice a few trained birds to stop the terrorist acts from succeeding.

owenversteeg 10y ago
Missile? Laser? That's insane. As someone who's worked on UAVs quite a bit, the only thing I'd consider taking them out with - in a situation which necessitated it, like a terrorist attack - is guns. Laser systems would be completely unrealistic for this situation, and using missiles would be absolutely overkill. A predatory bird dive bombing a drone would also not be something I'd bet on. Sure, I have confidence they could evade traditional cameras. But once they hit the UAV, what happens? The bird would almost certainly be killed or maimed by the propellers, and the drone would fly fine. If the creators of the drone spent just $100 extra or so on decent propellers, the drone would easily survive the attack. Using birds with no extra weapons against drones would only work in case of extremely stupid drone creators, and would probably result in at least one seriously injured or killed bird per drone.
- bayesian_horse 10y ago
  Apparently it works quite well, though.
- seszett 10y ago
  An eagle like in this case is orders of magnitude more powerful than the kind of drone being talked about, though. Not armed military drones, obviously, but these are not the target. A mass of 4 kilograms or so diving at several hundred km/h will do a lot of damage, keep in mind these birds kill adult deers. They're also used to avoiding the dangerous parts of the animals they attack and fast bird vision gives them a better view of rotors than the indistinct blur humans see. At 10000 rpm or so, birds of prey should actually be able to follow the movement of blades. They also have more lifting power than most drones, which means they are absolutely able to wrestle them to the ground if the initial impact doesn't knock them off (especially since they will have a far better understanding of what's going on than the drone's operator). I am as tempted as anyone to think that I am smarter than professionals I read about in the news, but I'm pretty sure these guys have thought their experiment through.

bayesian_horse 10y ago

Apparently it works without serious injuries. I had the same initial reaction. The bird is apparently supposed to carry the whole drone (or at least try to), which also puts a limit on the size of drones. Bird's feet have a very tough hide. And these eagles seem to have leather cuffs. Also wild eagles have been known to go after drones with no problems...

RealityVoid 10y ago
They kind of relie on a certain type of frame so they can grab the drone. I have cut myself pretty badly with drone propellers, I think people underestimate how powerfull those things are. No chance eagles would be a good counter-measure.
- palunon 10y ago
  >I have cut myself pretty badly with drone propellers On the other hand, can you kill a deer with your bare hands ?
  - RealityVoid 10y ago
    > On the other hand, can you kill a deer with your bare hands ? I don't know, never tried it. Maybe. But that is irrelevant to the matter at hand, an eagle would get fucked up by fast-spinning propellers no matter of its ability to kill a deer. They are just pieces of meat with bone through them, mo matter their speed and athletic ability. As to the drones itself, for carrying heavy loads most likey they would use and X8 design. I once had the nasty pleasure of flipping an X8 drone upside down and for some reason, don't remember why, lost control and propellers were spinning full throttle, upside down. As you can imagine, it was a spinning death-machine and the only clearance I had to grab it was an 10x10cm square right in the middle of the drone. It was terrifying, but managed to stop it. I can't imagine an eagle grabbing it anywhere without it getting messed up. As a side-note, a decent X8 mid-sized-lift drone can be custom buit for under 500E. I don't know how much an eagle would cost.
    - 10y ago

lumberingjack 10y ago

These birds take down full sized wolves. I think they will have a chance at immortalizing a drown. And it's a bird if it loses it's life and saved one human then so be it. Please don't post stuff from reddit it's full of idiots.

pvaldes 10y ago
We forget that raptors are protected species. In USA you can't even keep the dropped feathers of a bald eagle in your house. Is illegal without a very special permit. To kill and chop bald eagles with a drone would be symbolically an huge success and desirable goal for any terrorist. This birds can't be easily exported to France or other countries for its huge symbolic value In Europe is the same. To deliberately train a golden eagle to fly across a meat mincer would upset a lot of people sweating blood and tears 365 days/year for protecting predators. You would need to pass law exceptions for all EU and argue the convenience to do so. To use the highly endangered Eastern Imperial Eagles for this would be even worse and unforgivable. The trainer will be sued and will face a lot of legal issues. For Pete's sake, this is idiot! just use another drone for that!
- palunon 10y ago
  They are being hatched specifically for this purpose. These aren't random eagles captured in the wild.
  - pvaldes 10y ago
    I hope so, because to capture protected species in the wild is a crime. In any case even if you can keep an endangered species in captivity in a few special cases, you still could not deliberately put in danger the life of those captive species, because is not a cool toy, is a protected species by both the european and also the french laws. It does not matter if hatched for this or for that. Is still illegal. You can't even let fly freely this species in a public space like a city without breaking the law. For USA see: The Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act (16 U.S.C. 668-668d) In European community "Member states shall prohibit, for species in Annex 1 (that includes Aquila pomarina, Aquila clanga, Aquila heliaca, Aquila adalberti, Aquila chrysaetos, Hieraaetus fasciatus and Hieraaetus pennatus among other species) the sale, transport for sale, keeping for sale and the offering for sale of live or dead birds and of any recognisable parts or derivatives of such birds". Also eggs. And of course to deliberately annoy or harm this species is strictly forbidden. See directive 2009/147/EC

EGreg 10y ago

I wonder, at which point do we get to MAVs that are so small and agile that a room full of 300 humans could not grab even one of 300 mavs even if they tried really hard. In other words every time the MAV sees something coming at it, it redirects is flight in microseconds to avoid it, like a fly. Imagine such swarms infiltrating any size crowd without ever getting caught. You could incapacitate a whole crowd via MAVs landing and causing electroshocks. Or administering a pathogen. http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2014/04/10/insects-fruit-flies-science-flight-animals/ http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2014/04/10/insects-frui...

sangnoir 10y ago

Are you questioning whether the military would hesitate to put the life and limb of birds at risk? I'm sure the training is as safe as it can be (just like for humans) but all bets are off in an actual hostile situation.