In a future where everyone and their dog has a drone, how we are going to police them all has yet to be decided, but the Japanese police might just have the answer.
We’ve seen a rogue drone, on more than one occasion, attempt to invade the grounds of the White House in Washington DC and even flights that make it into restricted grounds, all of which is making security forces rather nervous.
But now the Tokyo Police have decided that, rather than investing in expensive technology that could disable a drone remotely, or just firing at the thing with traditional ballistics, they’d rather make things simple and catch the pigeon, I mean, drone.
Gif via Engadget
According to Engadget, the concept is quite simple, in that they take their own drone, a large DJI Spreading Wings 900, and fit it with a huge net that measures nearly 1ft in length that is capable of tangling the offending drone in the mesh.
While they have already tested the drone’s capabilities in one example, the Tokyo Police will be looking to continue testing the drone in similar catching manoeuvres for the rest of December, with expectations that there will be 10 of the drones patrolling the skies for renegade, malicious drones.
Tokyo’s apparent urgency to have a squad of flying, netted drones is not just because someone in the police force hates drones, but comes following the discovery last April that a drone carrying nuclear material had landed on the roof of the prime minister’s residence.
Peeping drone image via Shutterstock
