Pierluigi Paganini April 04, 2016

Delft Dynamics conducted a successful test, where a drone was taken out of the air by another unmanned aerial vehicle named DroneCatcher.

The drone industry is growing at a rapid pace. Aerospace research company Teal Group has estimated that sales of military and civilian drones will total over $89 billion in the next 10 years. The possible fields of application for UAVs are unlimited.

The use of drones for civil uses is syndicated for two main reasons. The risk that these machines could be hijacked or can be subjected to failure, and for the fear that they could collect unauthorized data, violating privacy of citizens. The FAA has announced that one of its top priorities is to publish rules for small UAVs later this year.

What to do when a drone flying over an unauthorized area?

We read about a number of possible solutions, most intriguing were:

• target the drone with a malware that allows gaining its control, this is the case of the maldrone project presented by the security expert Rahul Sasi on January 2015.
• train birds to take down unauthorised drones, this is the experimentation conducted by the Dutch police.
• Jam the drone interfering with control activities of its operators and forcing it to land. I reported the cases of the DroneDefender,a weapon specifically designed to target drones at a range of just 400 meters with radio waves forcing them to safe mode.
• The Tokyo police revealed in December 2015 a curious drone catcher that captures other UAVs with a net if their operator doesn’t comply with orders.

The concept of Dronecatcher is not new, it was first proposed in since 2014 by the ME Delft Dynamics, meanwhile a first proof-of-concept video was published online in March 2015.

“To counter the threat of unlawful use of unmanned systems, the Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice, together with the Dutch National Police and the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee, has selected a number of projects in which concepts are developed that can be used to detect, indentify [sic] and/or remove these mobile systems in a controlled manner. Project ‘DroneCatcher’ of the Dutch SME Delft Dynamics, is one of the ideas that has been selected to carry out a feasibility study.” is the description published with the video.

That first prototype presented was able to hit the drone with the net causing its fall, of course this is not applicable in populated areas due to the risk of incidents.

Now it has been presented an evolution that features a parachute. The new Dronecather captures a drone with a net then uses the parachute to mitigate the effects of the fall.

“Last week, Delft Dynamics conducted a successful test, where a drone was taken out of the air by another unmanned aerial vehicle, the ‘DroneCatcher’. This test was carried out for the SBIR “Protection against unmanned mobile systems”.
After detection of the unwanted system, the DroneCatcher is launched and directed towards the unwanted system. After taking aim using the onboard camera, the net-gun is triggered from the ground. The drone gets caught in the net and drops to the ground.” wrote the Delft Dynamics.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Dronecatcher, security)