Dutch Firm Trains Eagles to Take Down Drones | Hacker News Reader

Dutch Firm Trains Eagles to Take Down Drones

mobile.nytimes.com

69 pointsbreck43 comments

Now we just need to develop UAS's with eagle countermeasures. Lucky for us there is a compound that behaves like capsaicin does in humans but with birds. Methyl anthranilate[0], the chemical responsible for grape flavor in koolaid, bubble gum, and other food products, causes temporary painful sensations in avians. Oh and it is mostly harmless to avians and humans, it's a food product for crying out loud.

Sadly it does not appear that food products contain high concentrations of methyl anthranilate, but methyl anthranilate can be purchased in large quantities as a bird repellant.

So all we need to do to protect our UAS's is mount a MA fogger on them. So here's the neat thing, UAS's are nice sources of turbulent flow, a fact which the Yamaha Rmax helicopter exploits to better coat plants with pesticide[1]. This means if we inject MA fog into our UAS's prop wash we can attain optimal MA application on attacking avians.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methyl_anthranilate [1] http://www.gizmag.com/go/2440/

A food product for crying out loud ... I see what you did there

I was thinking of the same thing.

But unfortunately people flying drones for malicious reasons may not think in the best interest of the animals. They can make use of mace or something.

I think you need to define "mostly harmless". I will imagine that if a bird gets sprayed those chemicals mid-air, it will either drop to the ground or start flying erratically and collide into something mid-air which can cause death[1].

[1] I've seen a bird hit the side of my stationary car out of nowhere and it died on the spot.

Similarly these birds are attacking drones midair which may cause them to spiral to the ground and be destroyed. It seems like fair game to build anti-bird defences in to your drone given that birds are being trained to attack them. Perhaps it will make these people think twice.

If your drone gets damage, you should file a complaint against the bird owner. Otherwise, unless the birds are threatening actual people and not just property, it might be (and should be) a crime to deliberate install mechanisms to harm them.

> "to spiral to the ground and be destroyed"

That article stated, that these birds are able to bring the drone to the ground safely.

> "It seems like fair game to build anti-bird defences..."

[irony on] Yeah totally. [irony off]

Because it is your right to fly your drone everywhere? To potentially endanger others?

Let's say imagine these trained birds attacking your drone after it moving into the flight path of a landing aircraft. Or above a crowd at a festival, or above your neighbors garden.

What if it fails and drops? What if it crashes into something (plane) or someone (human)?

If someone would endanger me or my beloved ones (be it in a plane, at a festival or in my garden) by flying these things irresponsibly - believe me a drone would not be the only thing broken if I could get to them.

If these birds are there to protect others from people using these things for malicious reasons or in a way that is just dumb (read idiots), I would hope that the owners of these things additionally get fined a horrendously high amount. And have to pay for the deployment of these countermeasure birds.

Make the learning experience a painful one for them I would say.

> Perhaps it will make these people think twice.

I am with you on this one. OK; I think of the drone operators as "these people" but isn't this the same?

> Perhaps it will make these people think twice.

About protecting restricted airspace?

Colliding with something mid-air sounds more like an unfortunate event than a probable risk.

Of course, a far simpler countermeasure would be to fly your drone for malicious purposes at night. As far as I know, there are no birds of prey that hunt other birds at night. Could owls be trained to take prey in the air despite being adapted to hunting rodents? I don't know.

FYI: http://i.imgur.com/3TiGEw4.gifv

Haha, that is crazy! It is a strike against a stationary target, however. I have yet to see an owl pick off another bird in flight. After all, why would any other bird be flying around in the dark?

Methyl anthranilate is present in pretty high concentrations in the fruit of grapevines descended from Vitis labrusca, a native grape species of northeastern North America. Concord, Niagara, and Delaware are some of the commonly available grape varieties that are crosses with v. labrusca and the "grapey" Welch's taste that some North Americans enjoy and most Europeans loathe comes mostly from the methyl anthranilate.

Just sayin'

Sorry to be a wet blanket, but in the US your proposal would likely result in charges for violating one of several "bird laws" such as the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act or Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Defending your property isn't sufficient justification for causing harm without the appropriate permits. Farmers for example are brought up on charges when they harm a bird of prey attacking their livestock, or when migratory birds are poisoned due to improper pesticide use.

There is so much glee and coverage around all this anti-drone tech. There's about 2Million of these drones out there [1]. Talking about spike strips and auto-blockades when there were just 2 Million cars out there in the early 1900's would've surely been considered counter-productive? And all the drone sightings seems so hyperbolic, and that's when they weren't "maybe plastic bags" [2]. Click-baiting is afoot methinks.

[1] http://dronelife.com/2015/04/16/drone-sales-numbers-nobody-k...

[2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/21/drone-believed-to...

As someone who works closely with birds of prey, I really wish this idea would go away. To me it's really not about whether or not it's dangerous to the raptor. It is, sure. But it is incredibly easy for a drone to evade a raptor by going straight up. No bird can climb that fast, not even a peregrine falcon, which is the fastest raptor going down. Any drone operator who's got half an eye on his/her drone will see that eagle coming and just get the heck out of there.

Are most drone operators experts on bird of prey escape tactics?

Well, if the information is known, then it can be shared.

The point being that once it is well known (which it will be if it's in any way successful initially), then it will simply be added to the drone operator handbook, and become less useful as an enforcement tactic.

If they know that they probably would not be flying their drone where it can cause problems

It seems it's most a case of dimwits flying it wherever they think it's "cool" with total disregard for aircraft and other things

I'm trying to figure out if I can build a device which will give a crow or raven a treat if it deposits a piece from a drone in the box. My biologist daughter was explaining that I need some way to have this action take place spontaneously so that future training can reinforce it, so perhaps first training them to put things in the box, then working on getting them to specialize in drone parts.

If you get the bird clicker trained you're more than half way there, and birds generally take to clicker training very quickly. Those particular birds have an affinity for shiny things, so painting the parts silver or wrapping them with foil might be one way to prompt the behavior for reinforcement.

edit: for the other half, depositing the parts where you'd like, look up "targeting". I'd train the birds to a colored sticker, then place the sticker on your deposit box gizmo.

But isn't there a big chance of the eagle getting hurt by the blades?

Which is why they're investigating equipping the talons with glove-like protection.

From the article:

> Worries have been raised that birds could be struck and seriously injured by a drone’s blades. Mr. Hoogendoorn said that the safety of the animals was a top priority, and that although eagles’ talons had scales to protect them, work was underway to give them more covering. Mr. Wiebes said safety measures could include some form of glovelike sheath for the talons.

Larger drones have carbon fiber propellers. Sticking a body part in the props at full speed is like sticking your hands in a blender [0]. Intuitively it seems you'd still break talons if you stuck them in a blender even if you covered them in leather gloves.

Seems like this would work pretty well for micro drones though.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/Multicopter/comments/1b5ihe/nsfw_go... (NSFW obviously)

Absolute lunacy - a bird will be seriously injured by this at some point.

Even the cheapest decent drone (Parrot AR Drone) can cause skin lacerations with its flimsy plastic blades. I shudder to think what some of DJI's carbon fibre blades and significantly more powerful motors do to flesh and bone.

Why don't they simply use drones to take down drones? It surely would be cheaper than training an eagle!

You are vastly underestimating the strength and durability of an eagle. Eagles are birds of prey. They can fuck up wolves and goats both of which have significant characteristics to deal out damage themselves. I would guess an Eagle could take down any consumer level drone without any issue what-so-ever. Military drones are another matter completely.

Eagles manufacture themselves and training them to take something out of the sky is probably not much more difficult than training a dog to play fetch.

Long term he is correct though. Drone makers will just about figure out how to circumvent birds one way or another, either from changes in selectivity, sounds, or even as someone suggested - chemical counters.

Drones set to hunt drones are a no brainer. The military will certainly have them so it won't be long before the police do. Even a ground based solution might work against any non hardened drone - just fry its electronics. You can pretty much limit the range of such an effect and I can imagine scenarios where all drones are just dropped from the sky.

Japanese drone catching drones with nets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vknRo7aLhc

> Drone makers will just about figure out how to circumvent birds one way or another

As anyone who has ever armed a fighting kite with razor blades can tell you. Sharpening drone blades might even cause an aerodynamic improvement.

Except drone makers have no reason to do this. I've seen the hype with these anti-drone-falcons, but there is still not one case where thy actually caught a drone in the wild.

Even if it were, drone builders do not want to be associated with rule-breaking drones. They are fine with falcons removing drones around, let's say... an airport. And so am I. so no reason to employ such anti-measures.

But from the get-go, the antidrone falcons are such an idiotic idea I can't even begin to take is seriously. The falcon would be killed by the drone. I say that as someone who injured himself with a drone (an average one, even) so I know firsthand how serious the damage can be. It barely can find a place to catch the drone with the models the used in the demo video. If someone flied an octocopter, the only place it can hook onto it is right from below, on the landing gear, and I find that unlikely. This would kill the bird for sure.

I find the very existence of anti-drone tech ridiculous. The who hysteria around this is right out of the middle ages witch-hunt.

> You are vastly underestimating the strength and durability of an eagle. Eagles are birds of prey. They can fuck up wolves and goats both of which have significant characteristics to deal out damage themselves.

To the best of my knowledge, wolves and goats have no spinning blades covering the most natural places to grab them.

There was a guy who decapitated himself with a drone just a few years ago. I think you vastly underestimate how easily carbon fiber propellers going at full speed cut through things.

With an RC Heli, not a quad/octocopter "drone". It had 28 inch (700mm) carbon fiber blades.

Here's hoping the birds are smart enough to tell the difference between quadcopters and RC helis, otherwise we're going to see some spectacular bird-fragging incidents.

You are vastly underestimating the power of a large multirotor.

A typical domestic lawnmower has about the same motor power and the same sized blade as a heavy lift quadcopter. Do you think an eagle could survive being run over by a lawnmower?

Why not have the eagles just drop a net over the drone?

Because the key advantage of an eagle over something like a microwave gun would be retrieval vs the drone dropping out of the sky on whatever happens to be underneath.

Also, grabbing is just what these birds happen to do. Try to teach a dog to run after a ball to drop a net on it instead of catching...

Original Dutch news that covered this like half a year ago mentioned the people handling the eagles laughing it off with "they've got skin more than thick enough!". This article mentions they are going to add even more protection.

Total madness. The first of these birds to encounter an RC helicopter will be shredded, protection notwithstanding. It seems to me like training animals to commit suicide by hurling themselves into whirling blades is a larger crime than flying a radio controlled toy somewhere you're not supposed to.

What if satanic cultists played rock and roll from a drone and corrupted our youth?

Yes..... if a drone actually was a security risk you want an animal to deal with it?

OK, in prisons you could use it to minimise security issues, ie 'reduce' the drugs getting in.

But otherwise wtf? Take that terrorists we have a Eagle, that will probably stop you.

Idiots. Terrorists will be doing some interesting stuff in this area at some point. They are not yet.

But they are already winning, people are scared and no one has even done anything. Easiest job in the world.

Wouldn't it be easier to just put a butterfly net on another drone?

Truth is stranger than (science) fiction

Reply on news.ycombinator.com