Drones are really getting to be a scourge in the sky that many governments and countries around the world are looking for ways on how to prevent them from being a menace to people on the ground, or from violating their privacy. And it looks there are different approaches to doing it.

In the U.S., apart from regulations, enterprising individuals have created special ammo to shoot them down, or using radio waves to wrestle control from their owners and land them safely. It is really important that ways to disable rouge drones should take into consideration about the safety of people. There have been incidents of wayward drones falling into crowds below and injuring one or more.

As for the Japanese, they have their idea on how to take care of such drones.

Just like other countries, Japan has laws preventing unauthorized drones into restricted airspace such as airports, important facilities such as power plants, and fly to a height above 150 meters. In one incident, a drone carrying radioactive sand was made to land on the rooftop of the Prime Minister’s office.

With drones getting famous as military, reinforcement, commercial, and hobbyist tools; getting more sophisticated and easier to control, they can also be used for sowing chaos below. In this case, the Japanese police authorities are worried that they will be used for terrorist attacks.

Rather than think of sophisticated or high tech tools, which the Japanese are no strangers to, being leaders in robotics, they decided on a simple answer ---- a drone that can catch other drones.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Police, according to the Asahi Shimbun, will have a drone squad that will first deploy loudspeakers to warn the operator of the drone that he/she is entering a restricted area. But if that fails, they will then deploy a drone equipped with a wide net to capture the net:

A drone catching drone, using a net will of course prevent a drone from falling to the ground, especially when there are civilians down below. It is not exactly a novel approach as this solution has been proposed in the other countries too, such as France. It is simple and not that expensive, save for the purchasing a more powerful drone to chase and catch rogue drones.

We don’t know if there will be a drone war between the government and civilians who will try to push the boundaries in the drone use.  Still, it is an interesting to see the developments in drone use, as they are seen as valuable tools in everyday life, provided that they pose dangers to civilians or misused in violating the privacy rights of people.