As unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) become part of our lives in good ways, those seeking harm on others have also used the devices to cause destruction and mayhem. Terrorists in the Middle East have recently been using drones to attack enemy soldiers. In other instances, unwanted drones have been known to invade peoples' privacy or go in airspace where they are not wanted.
To combat this, Delft University of Technology’s Micro Air Vehicle Lab (MAVLab) is sponsoring an anti-drone competition, called DroneClash, with the goal to improve technology to combat unfriendly drones in the air.
In the competition, participants will use their own drones to take down as many other drones as possible, with explosive results. They will also need to avoid a whole series of anti-drone interventions that will be set up on a path the drones will need to navigate.
“Drones can fly into our lives, but we need to be able to take them out again if necessary” said Bart Remes of the TU Delft MAVLab. “Drone development has grown hugely in recent years, and you can see the anti-drone industry growing too. Ideally, these developments keep each other in check and result in a safe and responsible incorporation of drones in our daily lives.”
An artist’s rendering of the Hallway of Doom Destruction and Death for the DroneClash anti-drone competition. Source: TU Delft The goal of the competition is to generate new ideas in order to encourage the proliferation of anti-drone techniques to combat drones that mean harm.
On Dec. 4, teams will gather at a Valkenburg airport hangar in Katwijk, Netherlands where four teams will compete in each round. Each team has one or more fighter drones that can be used to take down other drones and a so-called “Queen drone,” which will need to be defended.
In the first battle area they try to take each other down, then the surviving drones fly through the "Hallway of Doom, Death and Destruction," where all kinds of anti-drone instruments will try to take them out. The final remaining drones enter the Queen palace where they must try to knock out the Queen drones of the other teams.
To learn more about DroneClash, visit http://www.droneclash.nl/
