Drones – no more airport interruption scandals: we’re here to ground you.

For a few weeks already, this here mysterious, shiny, clearly hi-tech, futuristo device has been complementing the minimalistic office furniture of my corner office at our HQ. It’s so shiny and fancy and slick and post-modern that whenever I get a visitor – which is not often of late due to our general WFH-policy – it’s the first thing they notice, and the first question is always, simply, obviously – ‘what is that?!’ ->

Is it a bird, is it a plane, is it a camera (on a tripod), is it a gun, is it some kind of scanner? Warmer, warmer!…

But before I tell you – quick digression!…

Traditionally, once a year, we have an internal ‘Ask Me Anything’ (AMA) session, where our employees hear about what’s been going on in the Kompany over the last year and what’s being planned, and also put questions to the senior management, etc. But this year – given that it’s just so darn 2020! – we’ve been having AMAs more often. Most folKs are sat at home and the daily news in the media is often rather depressing, so a mood boost was deemed appropriate and thus prescribed. Thus, this year we’ve been doing an AMA-broadcast once every quarter.

Now, during the last AMA, someone in the audience asked: ‘What’s that mysterious… whatever it is, stood behind you?!’ And before I had a chance to answer, in the simultaneous online chat that comes with the AMA, all sorts of theories quickly sprang up – the most interesting to me being ‘lie detector’!

But no. Not a lie detector. However, what it actually is is even more curiously interesting than a lie detector would have been. And so, here, now, finally, after much hard toil of our R&D heroes, I introduce to you, dear readers, our new Antidrone device. Welcome! Nice to meet you, etc.!…

It’s ‘anti’-drone, as in – it shoos off drones that may come too close to things like guarded critical infrastructure objects. Remember when Gatwick Airport came to a standstill with a thousand flights delayed while an unknown drone was being flown over it? Yes – our Antidrone would be suitable for protecting against things like that, for example.

Think of it as a modern-day, digital-era scarecrow! At a stretch – it even roughly resembles the outline shape of a scarecrow! But it acts like one too: scaring off unwanted crows drones, but in a modern – active – way, unlike the old-school, passive, scarecrow way (just standing there, scaring with its appearance). Antidrone is smart, proactive, and can actually knock out unwanted drones. I’ve never seen a scarecrow knock out a bird!

So how does it work?

Well, if an unknown drone flies too close to a protected object, Antidrone first starts a ‘dialogue’ with it! If that dialogue goes well, the drone realizes it’s not welcome, about-turns, and flies away – flea firmly lodged in ear. If the dialogue goes badly, Antidrone thinks: ‘I can’t go for that (no can do)‘, and jams it with a radio signal, forcing it to land – softly (we’re not barbarians!).

That’s it in a nutshell. Now for some detail…

The Antidrone is a development of ours based on machine learning that uses neural networks to analyze data from various sensors to be able to detect UFOs drones approaching protected no-fly zones.

And not only is it a very clever piece of hardware, it’s a beauty too! ->

But wait; there’s more!…

Using lidars and machine-vision, Antidrone can automatically scan and analyze airspace for suspicious drones (it takes less than a second!), and the results are shown on a convenient graphics interface that shows a map, threat logs, data on particular models of drones it finds, and a lot more besides:

Straight after the above-mentioned dialogue, the system immediately signals if a given drone’s flight is permitted and all is ok. If there’s potential for danger, the hardware receives a signal from the software to neutralize the threat. First the drone is asked politely to leave. If that doesn’t work, different methods of… persuasion are applied – but always well within legal bounds, just in case you were wondering.

Antidrone will be of most interest to organizers of mass outside gatherings and events, and owners of industrial and assorted other critical infrastructure objects, and of course to airports. These things clearly need protecting from drones and the dangers they pose and the costly disruptions they may cause.

More detail about our Antidrone – and also about the different ways drones can be harmful – you can check out here, on our Kaspersky Daily blog, and on YouTube.

Meanwhile here, today, as per – more pics! ->

PS: Antidrone has a few other non-standard applications that are no less interesting! An enhanced version of the neural network can also search for, say, cars or folks lost in a forest. After detecting tiny drones in a vast sky, tasks like these should be a cakewalk! Still, the enhanced version is still in its early stages of development, so I’ll tell you more about it another day…

And that’s all for today folks. So now – back to work!…

PPS: Now you see – not only are we not just an antivirus company, and not just a software company; we’re also now a company that makes hardware too – cool, shiny and slick hardware at that. Yes, I am pleased. Can you tell? )