How did these lasers take down this drone?

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Any idea how these Chilean protestors using handheld lasers caused the police drone to go down like that?
 
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Only has a few views at the moment and looked for it but found little.
Did find this in a comment
The lasers stop it from actually doing anything sensible while up there, but wouldn't bring it down.

My guess is it's a cheap old drone like a first gen parrot or something. It has no gps, no return home, and it's failure mode is just to land. Cell phones with wifi on disturbs the communication enough and voila, the drone drops gently. Any situation where the drone looses control over it's flight would result in a far more drastic fall or, more likely, uncontrolled sideways motion instead of just loss of altitude.

lasers just made sure it couldn't capture much video while up there, and made this video look cool.
Thats about all I can think of also.
 
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A comment I read suggested that the lasers affected the optical obstacle detection sensors
yeah, any strong enough laser will kill an optical sensor. With no data coming from the collision sensors and no camera it is quite possible that the drone would crash, especially if the operator is out of LOS.
 
There's something not right about that video. I can't put my finger on it but something doesn't add up.... what's that saying:

"Something isn't as it seems!!"
 
The lasers probably had nothing to do with drone crash just a coincidence
 
There's something not right about that video. I can't put my finger on it but something doesn't add up.... what's that saying:

"Something isn't as it seems!!"

Like what? As far as I know it’s genuine, there is a massive thread on Reddit over it and no one has said anything about it being staged or fake and that’s one skeptical bunch. What is your suspicion?
 
1. Laser would not 'down' anything especially hand held as they had.
2. The best they can do is 'flash' the camera recording and sending back video to operator - such that operator can no longer visually see via camera to control it.
3. I have not found anywhere online that reliably states where the drone landed
4. Journalistic licence is always a factor - when they don't have fact - they 'augment' ... to put it nicely !
5. If it was so easy to down a 'drone' as they imply - why are not authorities doing it ?

Police ... demos .... drones ... you have 3 items in one short video clip that meets Journalistic ( Mod Removed ) requirements.
 
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Like what? As far as I know it’s genuine, there is a massive thread on Reddit over it and no one has said anything about it being staged or fake and that’s one skeptical bunch. What is your suspicion?


I read ever single post on the Reddit (it was painful to say the least) and their lack of understanding of the technology is mind boggling but that doesn't keep people from posting non-sense anyway.

I am the owner of several "High Output" lasers. I have done lots of "Experiments" with them and the worst I can think could happen might be:

1) The optical sensors (on camera and possible OA) would be destroyed with direct hits from lasers but those shouldn't cause the aircraft to ascend/descend like a Yo-Yo like that. It would probably cause some strange OA Sensor errors and possibly a RTH or something but not the up & down motion. At least I don't think so.

2) If the aircraft were to get a direct hit on a "dark" area with no air movement and very close range (a few feet max) it could damage DIODES etc by melting the components. At those ranges those hand held don't have the power and they aren't focused on a specific spot long enough to cause damage.

If someone had a large unit (I'm talking much larger like table top unit) it would cause significant damage but even then I suspect it would be a failure type event to where the aircraft would tumble to the ground not the Yo-Yo actions depicted in this random video.

I've been wrong before but I just don't believe what I'm seeing in this video. It just doesn't add up at least not to me.
 
Not the first Journalistic 'extrapolation' of the 'truth according to whoever's writing the article' ...
 
Like what? As far as I know it’s genuine, there is a massive thread on Reddit over it and no one has said anything about it being staged or fake and that’s one skeptical bunch. What is your suspicion?

The only credible mechanism I can think of is interference with the VPS system, either directly from the lasers or by laser light scattered from the rather smoky/foggy air around the drone, which could have triggered autolanding. The aircraft behavior looks very much like the FC response to brief full down throttle when it thinks it is close to the ground, which it interprets as a landing command. We've seen similar events reported on these forums in foggy conditions.
 
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It looks an awful lot to me like when my drone's battery is going dead and it starts to land on it's own, you can fight it, but once it hits like 1 percent it drops. I think it is just a dead battery issue.
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Any idea how these Chilean protestors using handheld lasers caused the police drone to go down like that?
 
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Reactions: BigAl07
It looks an awful lot to me like when my drone's battery is going dead and it starts to land on it's own, you can fight it, but once it hits like 1 percent it drops. I think it is just a dead battery issue.

It certainly could be that, although it would be very careless piloting in that case.
 

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