In December this year, Delft University of Technology will be hosting ‘DroneClash’, the first ever Dutch anti-drone competition. At this competition participants will use their own drones to take down as many other drones as possible and also avoid a series of anti-drone obstacles.
“Drones can fly into our lives, but we need to be able to take them out again if necessary”, says Bart Remes of the TU Delft Micro Air Vehicle Lab. The goal of the competition is to generate new ideas for the drone and anti-drone industry. A year ago we also told you about the Dutch police training eagles to attack drones.
Watch the video and follow the link to sign up for DroneClash if that’s your thing.
It’s that time of year again where we look back and tell you about some of the things we wrote about, and this year we had one clear theme that stood out and that, sadly, was ‘tastelessness’.
We’ll leave it at that, thanks for all your comments, and a reminder that next year is our 10th year anniversary in February, so I guess we should think about doing something special.
Enschede Airport Twente, close to the German border and little flight activity, now has a test location called Space53 for drones and UAVs. It’s apparently the first airport in Europe that allows drones to be tested in ‘complex environments and situations’. Nokia already plans to test Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Traffic Management systems (UTM) there.
Space53 is a collaboration between businesses and the public sector in the region of Twente. Besides an airport and various spaces for research, development and testing UAVs, schools and universities have joined in. They’ve already had some swarming tests where a bunch of drones fly together and collaborate in the event of a calamity.
Fun fact: When the notary public wrote up the transfer deed for the airbase after WWII, he apparently had had one too many and it accidentally wrote ‘Twenthe’ instead of Twente, which is still written this way today by the local flying club.
During the Dream and Dare festival on April 22 through 24 at the Eindhoven University of Technology to celebrate their 60th anniversary, they’ll be tech, innovation and debates as well as art, music and food. The food part will have drones acting as waiters, happily combining tech and drinks.
At the drone café, visitors will be able to order drinks from one drone while its drone colleague brings the drinks to you. It sounds way easier than it is to have drones flying indoors instead of outdoors. They need to fly much more accurately, they need to make way less noise and they need to not clip off any fingers when you grab your drinks from their talons. As well, the drones can only handle 300 grams of weight at a time.
Tessie Hartjes, of the student workgroup Blue Jay Eindhoven, says the combination of navigating and grasping is a big deal. She explains that although the drones use speech recognition software (and I’m assuming it only understands Dutch), the café is too noisy for that to work properly so you can order from the bar, old school. The drones also fly a certain route that you cannot walk into for fear of causing an accident. You can also pay to the drone, and tipping them might actually make them tip. I’m kidding.
Instead of scaring off seagulls with eagle noises like in Haarlem in 2015, the Dutch police have stepped up their game and are now training eagles to knock out ‘enemy’ drones out of the air. The idea was to find a way to get rid of drones that are not allowed to fly in certain spaces, such as protected airspaces. The video below tells of a trauma helicopter not being able to land because some moron was flying a drone and blocking the way or another moron flying their drone next to busy Schiphol Airport.
Finding the drone pilot can be very difficult and take a long time, a policeman explains. The eagle in the video grabs the drone with its talons, which are designed to carry things as opposed to just having claws like many other animals. There’s also less impressive tools they plan to use such as casting a net over the drone somehow. “The eagle sees the drone as prey and wants to bring it to a safe location and protect it from outsiders”. The trainers are not worried about the propellers hurting the animal, although opinions might differ on that point. The eagle may even get special gear for protection.
It’s in Dutch, but it’s all about watching the eagle catch the drone.
Filed under: History,Nature by Branko Collin @ 8:34 am
Last May the grounds of the Land van Ooit theme park (‘Land of Someday’) in Heusden, Brabant, that has been for sale since 2008, were turned into a temporary regular park by the municipality.
Before opening the grounds to the public again, drones had already taken the opportunity to shoot a couple of videos.
The theme park’s attractions were auctioned off in 2008, a year after the park went bankrupt. In 2015, after opening the park to the public again, the municipality of Heusden destroyed all the buildings in the park except the 13th century Castle d’Oultremont. It seems the pond with Napoleon’s drowning army also still exists. The municipality is still hoping to sell the grounds.
In 1989 former Efteling CEO Marc Taminiau founded Land van Ooit. He was trying to escape the fierce competition between ride-based amusement parks by creating a theme park based on theatre. The central deceit of the park was that it was its own fairytale country with its own anthem, salute and border crossings. Visitors were called Anderlanders, Otherlanders. Its motto was children are in charge. In its heyday Land van Ooit managed to attract up to 375,000 visitors a year.
Drone enthusiast Paul Haerkens has captured himself cycling near Den Bosch, Noord-Brabant, filmed by his Yuneec Q500 drone camera in ‘watch me’ mode.
You’ll see Versailles-like miniature gardens, bollards stopping cars from parking on the side walk, flat trees, hints of traffic circles and very little traffic. The film will give you an impression of what a Dutch neighbourhood in the middle of the country looks like: no canals, no bike paths (!) and no bustle.
The catchy music is the intro music to Paul Verhoeven’s classic ‘Turks Fruit’ (‘Turkish Delight’), composed by heavyweight Rogier van Otterloo and performed by Belgian jazz legend Toots Thielemans, all three of which come highly recommended.
While private citizens have been allowed to fly drones of less than 4 kg as they please, business people like journalists need to wait six weeks to get a permit, take expensive lessons for months and ask permission from various government agencies. Not following these rules could mean thousands of euro in fines for business use. However, as of June 1st, the rules will be relaxed for the police, fire brigade and emergency services. In the mean time, the press and surely other business people continue to use light drones hoping not to get caught.
As of 1 October the rules for flying drones in the Netherlands will change for both private and business use. Business use of drones less than 4 kg will be the same as for private use, while hobbyists who want to fly drones heavier than 4 kg will basically be subjected to the same rules as what businesses have to follow now for all drones.
Having a drone deliver asparagus to your restaurant to ring in the new season on 1 April was a novel idea and a great publicity stunt for restaurant De Zwaan in Etten-Leur, Noord-Brabant, but it didn’t go exactly as planned.
Plan B was landing the drone nearby in case of wind and then taking a walk to pick up the asparagus, but that didn’t pan out either, as the drone went with Plan C, which resulting in a crash-and-burn scenario.
The drone made a stop along the way to change batteries, which went well, but the takeoff afterwards eventually turned into a nose dive and a pile of flambé white asparagus.
I’m already curious as to what delivery method they are going to try next year.
After the world found out about an owl terrorising the city of Pumerend and sending people to hospital, the city of Haarlem has decided to attack its annual seagull problem with drones, based on an American idea. Haarlem is a few kilometres from the North Sea, while Amsterdam is further away and seems more overrun by pigeons.
Forget hanging devices that make falcon noises to scare seagulls off. With a drone you can replace the camera part with the noisy device and scare the seagulls out of their nests, as long as it’s not too windy for the drones. Seagulls are a protected bird type, so scaring them away is the city’s best bet for now.
Last May the grounds of the Land van Ooit theme park (‘Land of Someday’) in Heusden, Brabant, that has been for sale since 2008, were turned into a temporary regular park by the municipality. 
