In the past two decades, Drone Technology has been one of the biggest revolutions in warfare. Drones or unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) can do everything from conducting airstrikes to disable roadside bombs. And there are a lot more advantages of drone technology in the military and defense operations.
However, it becomes impossible to track and arrest the person who programmed it or is piloting it. The only way to stop it from reaching its target is to get it out of the air as soon as possible.
This is only the beginning. As the drones are getting more portable and available, there is a real risk of people using them for harm. You need some way to take them down.
Vancouver, Canada based company, AerialX claims that it has come up with a magic bullet to stop incidents like this. Using its expertise in areas like machine vision and unmanned aircraft, combined with its contacts in the defense world, AerialX has created a patent-pending solution called the DroneBullet.
It is a kamikaze drone that looks like a miniature missile while having the ability of a quadcopter. And is described as a “Hybrid between a Missile and a Quadcopter” by Noam Kenig, CEO of drone-oriented defense company AerialX. It weighs just 910 grams and has a four-kilometer range. This pocket-sized rocket is able to reach speeds of up to 350 kilometers-per-hour in a dive attack.
DronBullet is specially designed to lock onto enemy drones and then doggedly pursue them. Then finally crashing into them and knocking them out of the sky.
“We started out developing our own drones. At a certain point, we realized that the industry had become crowded,” Kenig said. “We then started working on counter-drone technologies. One solution we started working on was the drone forensic toolkit, which lets people retrieve crashed drones and analyze their flight information. We’ve also worked on detection systems for drones. Finally, we started work on the DroneBullet.”
Most other solutions come with some illogical requirements and complexity like massive costs, huge power draw, or the need for a highly trained UAS pilot. Whereas the DroneBullet has none of those shortfalls. For operating or installing the DroneBullet, the user or an operator only need to identify a drone target in the sky and then let the DroneBullet take care of the rest.
It is equipped with a camera and various neural net-based components that allow it to do the necessary onboard number crunching to calculate things like the optimal trajectory and flight path it needs to hit its foes.
“It can track objects autonomously and will even work out exactly where to hit its target, depending on its speed and whether [its target is] a quadcopter or fixed-wing drone,” Kenig continued. “That could be from above, below, or from the side. It works out where the weak spot is and goes after it. If it sees a small drone like a Phantom, it will hit it full-force from below. If it’s a bigger target, it can change the attack mode and attack from above. That’s usually the most sensitive part for drones, where the GPS module and multiple exposed propellers are housed.”
In addition, the Drone does not load with any explosives, its all destructive power comes from the kinetic energy supplied by its impact. It also possesses the ability to recalibrate in order to pursue a second target or return to the ground, after its initial collision.
Kenig also told that DroneBullet can operate in two types of scenario- it can be both a standalone system and also work with third-party detection systems. It simply means that the drone could be linked to radar or vision-based systems, and then deployed autonomously.
“This is for situations in which you really need to take a drone down before it causes real damage,” Kenig added. “You don’t want to mess around with solutions that involve manually chasing drones with nets or things like that. You don’t have time for it and want to be able to press a button and get rid of the threat immediately. This is what we’ve built.”