Have you tried to scoop a goldfish at a local festival in Japan? Well, its using a scoop to pick fish and transfer them to a bowl, a game very popular with both kids and adults at Japanese summer festivals.The law enforcement agencies in Tokyo have probably picked this idea for their efforts to control DRONES!!!With drones starting to consume airspace at various places not all are the “good” types. Rogue drones getting too close to aircrafts or the incident last May when a man flew a drone over the Prime Minister Abe’s residence, regulation relating to drones is catching up.
The law enforcement has come up with this awesome idea to catch drones using one of their own drone which will scoop rogue drones from the air and land the same “politely” so as to ensure that the drone does not fall on someone or something and cause further damage!
The rogue drone will be brought down after enough warnings have been provided to dissuade the owner and to be used a last resort. A British company Liteye has developed a product called Death Ray to blast drones mid air, but Tokyo Police seems to do it in a bit more subtle and polite way
We went to the Odaiba Fireworks last weekend and I spotted two drones flying in mid air trying to take a video of the fireworks. The Japan parliament also passed a regulation guideline last week which has a few points as below
- Those operating drones or other types of UAVs will be required to obtain special governmental approval to operate the aircraft in certain areas.
- Regulations in areas that are densely populated, event spaces, airports and sensitive government-linked buildings and facilities like nuclear power stations, will be strictly enforced, according to the new revisions.
- Flights taking place at night, or beyond the vision of the operator, will also require special permission, the new regulations state, with operators being required to state in advance to authorities the purpose of the drone’s flight, its route and the drone’s serial number.
- Operators will be required, in some instances, to have clocked up at least 10 hours of flying time, before being allowed to operate drones in certain areas.
Over and all an interesting innovation coming into the regulation net every passing day. A good and a bad thing….