Is Rapere The Drone To End All Drones?

Alysia Judge,

Rapere is a drone designed to hunt and attack other drones, and will be marketed largely at privacy activists

As flocks of consumer drones start launching into our skies over the coming years, one group of developers is using aggression to address growing security concerns.

Rapere is being touted as an “intercept drone.” In layman’s terms, that means it has been designed to scan nearby airspace for other drones, hover above them, and drop a tangle line into their rotors that will send them back down to Earth with a bump.

Derived from the Latin word “rapio,” meaning “to steal,” Rapere has been invented by a team of developers who claim to have years of experience with drone technology, but wish to remain anonymous now for commercial reasons.

Rapere droneSearch and destroy

Using an array of 12 low-res 90 fps cameras, the drone will seek out other drones before taking them out. The developers have tweeted that while so far Rapere only works in a lab setting, it is able to tell the difference between a bird and a drone.

Rapere has been invented as a pre-emptive strike against the threat to privacy drone technology could pose. “We’ve collectively never come across any bogus use of drones,” explains the team on its website.

“However it’s inevitable that will happen, and for people such as celebrities, where there is profit to be made in illegally invading their privacy, there should be an option to thwart it.”

So far only simple diagrams of how the drone could work have been released (see above). The developers meanwhile have claimed that even though Rapere is still being developed, they have already begun talks over setting the mass-production wheels in motion.

Of course, while the drone itself is a legal piece of technology, it’s clear that it too could be abused. The device has been invented as a defence against invasive drones, not as a random search-and-destroy tool.

Consequently, the Rapere will likely hit shelves at a high price point as a professional tool and not a toy. Its developers have also said that buyers will have to be qualified to own it.

“We have a number of ideas, such as requiring disclosure of ownership with the local police department before we will ship the drone,” they announced online.

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