An appropriately named startup, called Sky Sapience, has created a bound hovercraft that can send its surveillance mechanism up to 50 meters into the air. The weight of this surveillance drone is 10 kg and is called HoverMast. This advanced multipurpose surveillance machine can carry up to 9 kilograms of various surveillance and wireless data transmission devices over broadband communication channels. Sky Sapience, based in Israel, will demonstrate its innovative invention at the international conference of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems, which will take place in Tel Aviv from March 20-22.
The HoverMast tether acts as its power cable, which provides electricity to power the mechanism and a broadband cable to retransmit information to the main station. It is light in weight so anyone can drive it anywhere they want to set it up. It is connected to the car roof or another vehicle such as trucks, UGV and UPS (Unmanned Ground or Surface Vehicle) or off-road vehicle. HoverMast can even be used while traveling and, thanks to its aerodynamic shape and rotors with propellers, can effectively withstand gusts. And it only takes a single push of a button to launch this surveillance drone.
Sky Sapience’s main customer is currently the Israeli Ministry of Defense, which requested such a hovering platform two years ago. Sky Sapience positions its HoverMast drone as a special military observation unit, border control device and dimensional control. Because it is connected, it is not subject to strict air control regulations, so it is easier for the police and homeland security to use HoverMast.
Sky Sapience will begin producing these hover masts in the fall. The question of the future price of these monitoring devices remains open.
As far as I can see when this tethered surveillance drone becomes available on the market, it will be a great temptation for the bad guys to use in their dirty deeds. With all of the HoverMast properties currently available, however, all you can do is prevent Sky Sapience HoverMast from sending recorded video elsewhere, as you cannot block the data going through the tape. And even to block this data transmission, you have to be close enough to the vehicle with the floating drone, as it can fly 50 meters high and the maximum interference radius of the desktop whine is 40 meters.
Yes, there are more powerful models, but they can either only handle cell phone signals like this so they don’t block wireless transmission completely, or they are powerful military signal jammer that are only developed by the government for military purposes, such as those carry the soldiers in the backpack behind their backs. As you can see, Israel MoD is a customer of Sky Sapience for a reason.