The Register has an article discussing why shooting down wasn't a great idea either:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/12/20/gatwick_drone_non_s...

Not sure I agree entirely. A guy with a shotgun in a helicopter could of done it, both of which were available at Gatwick. The shot looses velocity quite rapidly so wouldn't do much damage on the ground. I guess you'd have to hope the drone didn't land on anything much.

Londoners mostly got though the Blitz ok with a million houses destroyed or damaged by bombs. We can handle the risk of a crappy drone crashing in someones garden. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blitz#No_collapse_of_moral...

I've been duck shooting and felt shot from shooters on the opposite side of the lake pattering down onto me and around me. I can't imagine a shotgun itself would present any real risk to those below, compared to the enormous distortion these drones caused.

This is pure bs.

In the UK, they ram people of scooters. The biggest danger here is 'a drone may fall on someones home'. Clearly there is either a HUGE force imbalance, or a hidden situation. Shotguns, as posted ad nasuem here, are perfectly safe.

Visually? I have yet to hear of a drone that can fly by camera instead of GPS.

I assume most can fly without GPS. I can launch either of my Mavics without GPS and fly free, or it can try to use visuals to maintain location.

I've flown within a cave without GPS. The drone drifts and can't really hold position reliably, but it works:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BoayncJgAOO/

Sure, I’ve flown many times without GPS too, but if one is jamming 1575.42 MHz, it’s a simple matter to do the same for 2.4ghz and 5ghz that’s used for the drone to remote link.

But we were talking about not controlling it so they can't jam your controller signal. Sure you can fly manually...

Which is great, but the parent post was describing autonomous navigation and disposable drones as a way for a drone operator to evade capture.

Ever watch drone racing? They're not using GPS. Here's an MIT video of a drone flying using computer vision through trees at 30mph. They've improved this quite a bit since the video was made. This stuff is getting pretty easy to do. https://www.csail.mit.edu/news/self-flying-drone-dips-darts-...

I have about a 6 mile range for video/control with my drone.

What sort of drone to you have?

It's a heavily modified 3D Robotics Solo that I picked up for $300.

Military hardware (the Tomohawk cruise missile, in particular) has had optical-only navigation since the early 1980's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TERCOM#DSMAC

I saw MIT opensourcing it 5 years ago. Flying through dense forests too.

https://github.com/andybarry/flight

It should totally be possible, I trust without clicking that they have an impressive proof of concept. But I've never seen it implemented in a commercial product. The only purpose would be when GPS is not available (indoors? Perhaps in a cave or on a space station? Not very common scenarios to not fly on auto pilot), so it makes sense that nobody bothered.

Yeah I'd be wary releasing that commercially, drones are easy enough already to crash, giving users an automated feature with the potential for monetary loss is asking for drama and bad press.

Huh? This is very common. For example, look at these capabilities from DJI, one of the most important drone manufacturers: https://www.dji.com/products/mavic?site=brandsite&from=nav

What knowledge/experience is your speculation that flying by camera doesn't exist based on?

There are two classes of drones. The ones which need C&C link from their pilot and the ones which fly autonomously. With the ones requiring C&C link the best bet of the authorities is to triangulate the transmitter and/or disrupt the link.

The ones which fly autonomously are more complicated. And the thread you were responding to was talking about this case. There are no commercially available drones which can fly autonomously by on-board visual navigation. The ones you linked can send a camera image back to the operator, but can't fly themselves based on that image.

what if they C&C via internet? (4g). Lantencies are low enough nowadays. Controller could be anywhere in the world.

Same issue as with a controller: jamming. Heck, they could detect the signal and just tell the carrier to shut the customer off. Would probably be unprecedented and therefore take some hours, but if the person persists, surely an option.

Oh right, the following mode! Hadn't thought of that, that surely counts as flying by camera. But it doesn't apply to the situation where you give the drone a preconfigured, uh, visual coordinates (a path, I guess that must be?) and it will try to follow it. So it still cannot wreak havoc at an airport without either you being there (follow mode), GPS being available (autopilot to coordinates), or flying manually using a remote control.