The other day I wrote about how the Pirate Bay was seriously investigating the use of GPS controlled flying drones to act as file servers for the Pirate Bay site. Well, it seems that this has already been done, and quite successfully it would seem.
After reading about what the Pirate Bay was planning Liam Young, co-founder of Tomorrow’s Thoughts Today , let the folks at TorrentFreak know that this wasn’t anything new.
Liam was part of a team that put together a project called “Electric Countermeasures” and its intent was to create something like an ‘aerial Napster’, or if you like an ‘aerial Pirate Bay’ but as they progressed with the project it has turned out to be something much more.
The idea was to use programmed drones to be part robotic swarm and part infrastructure that could gather in one place, create their own local WiFi network that anyone within range could connect to, and then disperse so that they could escape detection.
“The public can upload files, photos and share data with one another as the drones float above the significant public spaces of the city. The swarm becomes a pirate broadcast network, a mobile infrastructure that passers-by can interact with,” the creators explain.
via TorrentFreak
The “Electric Countermeasures” would be much more expensive that what is proposed by the Pirate Bay but that is to be expected given that their hardware requirements would be a lot higher. Each of the drones that would be a part of the swarm type network would need to be powered by 2x 2200mAh LiPo batteries with the lift required being provided by 4x Roxxy Brushless Motors that would run off a GPS flight control board. The master control systems would run through XBee wireless modules.
The group already has some demo drones which you can see in action in the video below.
Electronic Countermeasures @ GLOW Festival NL 2011 from liam young on Vimeo .
