Getting help from Guards from Above, a company that specialises in training birds of prey, the police force may have just cottoned on to a very effective defence system. A decision by the police on whether to use the eagles is expected by the end of the year.
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“What I find fascinating is that birds can hit the drone in such a way that they don’t get injured by the rotors”, said LeBaron. He and the company’s chief operating officer, Ben de Keijzer, train birds of prey to catch unauthorised unmanned vehicles – Hoogendoorn’s background is in private security, de Keijzer’s is in bird-handling and training.
Bald eagles and their white-tailed cousins are being trained to recognize the drones as prey and snatch them in mid-air.
DeTect and DroneShield take pacifist approaches to drone regulation, using different approaches to do essentially the same thing: detect, locate, and warn concerned parties about the presence of drones in restricted spaces.
Like elsewhere around the globe the use of drones in the Netherlands is booming.
“It’s a low-tech solution to a high-tech problem”, Dennis Janus said.
As well as providing impressive aerial shots of landscapes, letting helicopter fans control their own mini vehicles, annoying family members, and even spawning a brand-new competitive sport, there have been a number of regulation concerns surrounding drones. We are working closely with the Dutch National Police on the development of our services. Leveraging the eagles’ instinctual abilities will leave targeted drones with virtually no chance. “They use their strength and speed when they hunt: they are the masters of the air”.
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Hoogendoorn added that the real problem is that they have to destroy a lot of expensive drones during the testing phase and he said another unknown is how the eagles will fare in a crowd situation. In nature, birds of prey often overpower large and risky prey.
