IN THE FIELD
IN THE FIELD: DRONE SEEKER With more drones in our skies than ever before, the prospect of drone disruption to live events is very real. How will we protect against this new threat from above? TPi speaks to Max WiFi’s Rob Watson to find out…
Commercial drones are becoming more sophisticated, with models regularly released to the market created for various uses – most notably filming, but also for crowd control and entertainment displays. Drones add new dimensions of entertainment to live shows, as demonstrated on Drake’s Assassination Vacation 2019 tour, where 200 illuminated drones performed routines during two of his songs. Police and event security teams have also started using UAV technology for crowd surveillance in and around venues and events. However, UAVs can also be a disruptive technology. For example, back in May this year, drones were used to scatter leaflets displaying swastikas and hate-speech outside an Ariana Grande concert in Sacramento, US. Meanwhile, at this year’s Notting Hill Carnival – an event attracting more than a million visitors – there were multiple sightings of unauthorised drones flying above London’s streets. This posed a risk not only to the crowd, but also to the police helicopters flying overhead.
In fact, the potential risks drones pose to events are many and far-reaching, including the likes of paparazzi intrusion, contraband smuggling, VIP harassment, illegal streaming, protest and even terrorism. Having analysed the threats that drones pose, Max WiFi explored the technology to combat this problem and created Drone Seeker. Max WiFi’s Rob Watson explained the system: “Our RF sensors are placed around the perimeter of a venue and the detection software can locate pilots and their drones’ locations up to 1.5km away by triangulating unique radio signals emitted by the drone/controller,” he commented. The software displays the make/model, altitude, distance and speed of a drone providing event security teams with the information they need to react accordingly. “It also documents a history of the detected drones, logging any potential red flags,” Watson continued. Even if no malice is intended, drones can lose control easily – a quadcopter will crash if just one of its blades break, which throws up the 74
