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I work in this field. There's two components to this. There is the possibility to track devices from the manufacturer via serial numbers etc. Regulation will h
by anitil 6y ago
I work in this field. There's two components to this.
There is the possibility to track devices from the manufacturer via serial numbers etc. Regulation will help here. This isn't useful until after the fact for evidence gathering.
The second is to track them in the sky. DJI has a product AeroScope that tracks their drones, my company has a competing product (this isn't a plug so won't mention the name). The issue with this is you need hardware to do it, or use existing hardware. This is expensive, so only really feasible for specific assets (pipelines, corrections and sports facilities etc).
- bigiain 6y ago> There is the possibility to track devices from the manufacturer via serial numbers etc. Regulation will help here. This isn't useful until after the fact for evidence gathering. From where I'm, sitting, I can see one drone which can readily be "tracked via the manufacturer" (A DJI Spark). There are two more which came assembled - from random AliExpress (or maybe GearBest) vendors, which have nothing resembling a serial number nor any way to "phone home" to the manufacturer. There are another 5-6 which were completely assembled from parts (some of which I 3D printed myself) and which run open source software on ubiquitously available flight controllers. (And probably enough parts to assemble another 3 or 3 at least). Most of those can be set up to fly completely autonomously, where jamming of the control channels and/or video link won't affect the completion of the flight plan. (Jamming GPS would fuck them all up though, but I might have enough parts on hand to make a machine vision and lidar and IMU capable SLAM platform, that'd be able to fly a mission plan even in the absence of a good GPS lock...) (I'd be fascinated to know how your company's system fares against a reasonably creative "white hat" amateur drone builder who's intentionally set out to beat it...)
- anitil 6y agoYes there's plenty of difficulties with home-grown devices. Fortunately most people aren't capable of designing an over-the-air protocol like lightbridge, and there's a limited selection of chips to choose from. Vision/IMU/Lidar are obviously much harder My email is in my bio
- imtringued 6y ago>Regulation will help here. This isn't useful until after the fact for evidence gathering. This is actually the most effective anti drone defense. The only meaningful benefit of a drone vs a firearm is that the pilot is unknown. If you can link a drone to its pilot then you can just use conventional law enforcement. This would force abusers to build their own drones and thereby limit the impact of drone attacks significantly.
- meheleventyone 6y agoOr they’d just remove the serial numbers.
- xyzzy_plugh 6y agoSure, just like you can remove the serial numbers on guns, remove the license plate or remove the VIN of a car, etc.