Skunk Riot Control Drone is Armed and Dangerous

Drone security is quickly becoming an interesting and terrifying aspect our our modern lives, police forces, private security firms, event managers and the military are but a few of the groups who would have an interest in such things, especially if the technology is capable of saving lives without risking that of another.

The Skunk is a heavy duty and semi-autonomous octocopter drone, think of it like a hardcore edition of the Parrot AR drones you see people playing around with these days. However, The Skunk is no toy, equipped with pepper spray, plastic bullets, paint-balls, strobe lights, “blinding” lasers and audio capabilities that make it a terrifying anti riot weapon designed to help disperse mobs.

It comes equipped with four pneumatic carbon-fibre airguns that can fire 20 paintballs, pepper spray capsules or similar projectiles a second, giving it a combined fire rate of 80 projectiles a second, and with up to 4,000 projectiles in varying mixes as ammo. This means it doesn’t have to be shy about unloading a s£%^ storm on unruly crowds, but the Skunk manufacturer, Desert Wolf, say that the highest rate will only be fired in extreme life threatening situations.

Running all these anti-deterrent weapons is an FLIP thermal infrared and HD colour camera array, which can relay information back to an operator to help not only control and give the unit orders, but to also help identify those in a crowd that need to be controlled. The unit can also blast phrases such as “you now have 20 seconds to comply.” All sounds a little bit like the original Robocop movie to me, but if that film taught me anything, you don’t want to ignore that warning.

Thank you Wired for providing us with this information.

Image courtesy of Wired.