But isn't there a big chance of the eagle getting hurt by the blades?
> 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.
Seems like this would work pretty well for micro drones though.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/Multicopter/comments/1b5ihe/nsfw_go... (NSFW obviously)
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!
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.
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.
As anyone who has ever armed a fighting kite with razor blades can tell you. Sharpening drone blades might even cause an aerodynamic improvement.
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.
To the best of my knowledge, wolves and goats have no spinning blades covering the most natural places to grab them.
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?
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...