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Mark Robers CrunchLabs S03E05 Vortex Cannon vs Drone H 264
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00:00Hiding inside this box is an absolute marvel of engineering you might just find protecting you the next time you're
00:05at a public event. That's got a lot of people.
00:11And while this just might look like a boring old drone, it's actually one of the fastest in the world.
00:17It's autonomous and it weighs five times more than is typical.
00:20Because the purpose of this drone is to lock onto a bad guy drone trying to do bad guy things
00:26and then smash it into a thousand pieces.
00:28Now that drones have become so incredibly cheap, fast, and maneuverable, it's only a matter of time before they're used
00:34to carry explosives to attack key infrastructure or even worse.
00:39But before you get too worried, there's some good news here. And so today we're going to take a look
00:43at all the latest technologies being developed to combat this very possible scenario.
00:48And then after we see how the pros are doing it, we'll investigate how a few backyard YouTube engineers would
00:54handle the same problem.
00:55And I don't want to give too much away, but it might involve giant dart turrets, Tesla coil water guns,
01:00and the world's largest vortex cannon.
01:03Now to kick things off with the pros, I headed down to a company called Andro, who are one of
01:07the leaders when it comes to drone defense, where I met up with their founder Palmer Luckey.
01:11Who, by the way, you might recognize as the dude who dropped out of school at 19 years old to
01:15invent the Oculus VR headset.
01:17And right out of the gate, he set the stage.
01:19The United States has the ability to defend against fighter jet attacks or bomber invasions and zero ability to control
01:24what happens in the first few hundred feet of our airspace.
01:26That's the thing we have to solve. We have to tame the Wild West.
01:29Palmer explained to me there are six primary ways to take out a drone with bad intentions, and every method
01:34has a major flaw except for number six.
01:37The first is jamming, where you just overwhelm the drone with fake radio signals so it can no longer hear
01:42the instructions from the human operator and they lose control.
01:45Seventy percent of all consumer drones are from DJI, and they actually provide the equipment to law enforcement that will
01:51jam the communications like this.
01:53The second method to take out a drone with bad intentions is hacking, where you remotely hack into the drone
01:58using the radio signal, and then by exploiting known problems in the software, you can take control and force it
02:03to land or crash.
02:04But Palmer pointed out the potential Achilles heel for both of these first two methods.
02:09All they have to do to bypass that is use a different brand of drone, use a different brand of
02:12radio, use a different frequency, or build a drone that doesn't even need those frequencies in the first place.
02:17Basically, by using something besides the most popular consumer drones and frequencies means this would have no effect.
02:23Method number three is high-powered lasers, where you basically just heat up the outside surface of the drone so
02:28high that it catches fire.
02:30And this works pretty well against plastic drone casings.
02:33But once again, there's a weakness.
02:35What if I just hang a five-cent pie tin?
02:37It takes orders of magnitude more energy to burn through a metal reflective pie tin.
02:42It just doesn't work.
02:43The next method is a focused beam of microwave energy like an EMP.
02:47The goal here is to induce a current in the drone electronics so high that it fries the brain of
02:52the drone.
02:52But as Palmer explained, all a bad guy has to do to mitigate this is to buy some cheap copper
02:57tape from Home Depot.
02:59And once you cover the body of the drone, it becomes practically invisible to this attack.
03:03He can reduce the amount of power that gets to the internal electronics from an EMP by orders of magnitude.
03:09And that means a microwave beam gun that was previously able to fry a drone at 2,000 meters away
03:14now only works if that copper taped drone is 2 meters away.
03:19So now the beam gun is basically useless.
03:22Coming in at number five are nets fired in the air from other drones.
03:25And this makes sense if you're trying to capture the bad drone for forensic investigation.
03:29But net carrying drones by default are going to be slower and less maneuverable so they're beatable with speed and
03:35agility.
03:36Now all this would be real bad news were it not for the sixth method that even works if you
03:40designed a super drone that combined all the tricks to defeat methods one through five.
03:45And it's possibly the oldest method of destruction known to man.
03:51Smashing stuff.
03:54And because this method is so foolproof, Andrew makes a blazing fast drone appropriately called Anvil,
04:01whose only job is to use kinetic energy to bust up a dangerous drone into thousands of pieces.
04:07Imagine a children's bowling ball thrown twice as fast as a Major League Baseball fastball.
04:15That's what it's like getting hit by Anvil.
04:17And so naturally after hearing all of this, I wanted to see it in action.
04:20So they took me out to their test grounds where they set up a scenario where a bad guy drone
04:25was zooming towards our position.
04:27Thank goodness we got Anvil.
04:28Now they immediately identified the drone even before it had taken off.
04:31And that's due to the towers you see here.
04:34Each tower has sensors on it, such as radar, optical cameras, or IR detectors.
04:38And then they use computer vision, machine learning, and AI to detect, classify, and track everything of interest in a
04:45designated area.
04:46It's so precise, in fact, it will actually identify and track every single bird on the test range.
04:52They call this software system Lattice, and it's the real secret sauce at the core of their company.
04:57So what we do is we detect a drone, classify what it is, and if it's something that Anvil needs
05:01to go after,
05:02let's say you try to jam it, you try to hack it, it doesn't work, you now launch Anvil.
05:07Oh, here it goes.
05:08Anvil immediately zoomed out to the bad guy drone, but importantly, it didn't engage.
05:13Instead, it just locked into position about 30 meters underneath it,
05:17perfectly mirroring the other drone's movements turn for turn,
05:20just waiting for a human operator to give the go-ahead to use its terminal guidance sensors to close the
05:25gap and attack from below.
05:27Smashing into the drone at speeds approaching 200 miles an hour.
05:31Now besides use Anvil, they have other systems too, such as Roadrunner here,
05:36which is designed to take out faster and larger drones where you would typically have to fire a Patriot missile.
05:41But unlike a Patriot missile, Roadrunner costs an order of magnitude less,
05:45and if you just scare off the threat without needing to engage, then it can come back to be reused
05:50for another time.
05:51Ultimately, Anvil is taking the SpaceX approach to using cutting-edge engineering to make things way more capable for way
05:58less money.
05:59And you know they're doing something right because they have some portion of their solutions currently implemented in a lot
06:04of different places.
06:05Southern border, northern border, national parks, military bases around critical infrastructure, around nuclear energy sites.
06:11There's a lot of sensitive places where you don't want to have no idea who's there and what they might
06:17be doing.
06:17And so now that we've got a handle on how the pros do drone defense,
06:20the question you're probably wondering is how would Mark Rober do drone defense?
06:24And I think the answer is, it would probably look something like this.
06:27A seven-foot tall, fully articulated mega turret that fires a six-shooter barrel worth of preloaded mega darts.
06:34And so to properly test out how effective this was, I called three of my engineering buddies who also came
06:39up with their own ideas on how they would tackle the problem,
06:42and it sort of turned into a four-person backyard engineering competition.
06:45So in addition to my mega turret, their designs might include a fully electrified drone squirt gun,
06:50a vortex cannon that could do some real damage,
06:53and even a very scrappy system that does a little of its own autonomous drone tracking.
06:58But for context on our bootstrapped engineering showdown,
07:00it's important that I first let you know about a super secret project I've been working on for over two
07:05years,
07:05because ever since I launched Crunch Labs,
07:08the biggest bit of feedback was that this is great for kids to have a bunch of fun learning how
07:11to create and build,
07:12but what about something for teenagers and adults?
07:15Well, I'm happy to say that starting today, that exists now.
07:18And this is it!
07:19It's called Hackpack,
07:21and it's basically a series of really fun programmable robots that get delivered right to your door,
07:26where we build it together and learn step-by-step the kinds of engineering skills that go into making
07:30the builds on my channel.
07:32And don't be intimidated, because all these use a programmable microcontroller as the brain.
07:37Because if you can put together a Lego set, you can put together this,
07:40and it will work right out of the box.
07:42No programming required, and it will still be really fun.
07:46Heck yeah!
07:47Meaning for the first desktop turret robot, it works just like my mega turret,
07:51where the IR remote can spin it 360 degrees,
07:55and you can fire the six-shooter barrel worth of preloaded darts,
07:57either one at a time, or rapid fire.
08:00After which, you just refill the magnetic snap-on barrel cartridge.
08:03And then for the next box, you'll be building this awesome domino robot,
08:06that will follow any line you put on the ground,
08:08and lay down a path of dominoes right on that path.
08:11But then it knows to stop for a refill when it runs out.
08:16After that, you've got this oversized custom label maker,
08:19that works using just a sharpie and a roll of masking tape,
08:22or this beautiful sand garden controlled with the polar gantry.
08:26But here's the thing that makes these totally different,
08:28and this is the real magic of Hackpack.
08:31You can easily hack the brains of any of these robots in a bunch of ways
08:35to completely level up the functionality.
08:37So for example, for the desktop turret, you can make it password-protected,
08:40so only you can control it, and if your friend tries and gets it wrong,
08:44the robot's gonna let him know that.
08:45Or there's a party mode, sort of like Pie Face,
08:47where everyone sits around the table,
08:49and it will spin around as it terrifyingly plays with your emotions.
08:53Or you can hack it so when your dad turns on the TV,
08:56the receiver picks up on that signal and autonomously turns to his chair
09:00to unload the full barrel of darts.
09:02But there's even hardware hacks too,
09:04so it can continuously scan your office,
09:06and if you add a proximity sensor to detect an intruder,
09:09it will give them six convincing rapid-fire reasons to get the heck out.
09:12And so all these cool ideas act as a motivator for you to check out
09:16the web-based coding module where you can plug in your robot brain
09:19and make any of these updates.
09:21And when you're there, you'll see there's three levels.
09:23At level one, the code is fully locked down,
09:25and you can only swap out the full code for verified new hacks,
09:28like the passcode hack.
09:29At level two, you can now change some key variables,
09:32like how quickly the barrel turns,
09:34or how many numbers to put in your passcode lock.
09:36And then at level three, you have full access to change everything.
09:39And since my goal is to take you from wherever you're currently at,
09:42and then level you up,
09:43there's a community where you can post questions,
09:45as well as an AI chatbot named Mark Robot
09:47that will check your code for you
09:49and help you implement your most creative ideas.
09:51And each really slick-looking hack pack box that gets delivered to your door
09:55not only includes a video for me that shows you how to put it together,
09:58but each video also gives you a new juicy nugget
10:01about the tools I use to build and code stuff
10:03so you can grow your creative engineering brain muscles one step at a time.
10:07We put up the lid sticker instruction video for this first box,
10:10plus a 20-minute Arduino crash course on the Crunch Labs YouTube channel
10:14so you can see for yourself that we're not cutting any corners.
10:17Just like with my YouTube videos, I love taking complicated things and making them simple,
10:21and that's what we've done here.
10:23So if you've always wanted to learn to code, this is for you.
10:25But if you're a master coder and builder, this is also for you,
10:29because this is a community.
10:30So I'll absolutely be looking for the most impressively ridiculous hacks and modifications,
10:35and then we'll be sure all the other subscribers see them
10:37so they can be inspired to make their own hacks.
10:40And hack pack is a great activity to do with friends and family,
10:44or even just by yourself if you've always wanted to make and build cool stuff,
10:47but just haven't figured out that first step.
10:49On top of all that, a couple times a year,
10:51I'll randomly be selecting one box in which I'll place the platinum diploma.
10:56And if your box has it, congratulations,
10:58because college is now free for you or a loved one you want to transfer it to.
11:03Plus, you get to come out to Crunch Labs and brainstorm some of your own ideas with me and my
11:07team for a day.
11:08So if you want to embark on this journey of discovery with me,
11:11just go to crunchlabs.com or use the link in the video description,
11:14where to say thank you, we're giving away one free box as an early subscriber special.
11:19We poured our hearts into these for over two years,
11:22and I am so confident your brain is going to love them.
11:25But supplies are definitely limited on this first run,
11:28so if you don't want to miss out, be sure to go check out that link in the video description.
11:31And with that, let's get to the competition.
11:33Gentlemen, what's the confidence level at?
11:35Here.
11:35Maybe, like, here?
11:36Can I have a shovel?
11:37That's the sound of an engineer who has not got a lot of sleep this week.
11:40I'm excited to face off my turret versus your turret.
11:43Your turret actually shoots things.
11:44How do you know what mine is?
11:46It's right there.
11:47Oh, that thing.
11:50It's controllable with a hack pack turret remote.
11:53No, I'm sorry.
11:54I'm sorry.
11:55Move it that way.
11:55Lucky for the boys, the turret got distracted as the first drone took to the sky,
12:01pausing at a height where only a mega turret could possibly bring it down.
12:04I could absolutely hit that with a rock.
12:06And while that might be true for the average person,
12:10none of us are exactly first-to-be-picked-in-gym-class type material.
12:15At any rate, it was time to see what this bad boy could do.
12:18Let me line it up.
12:20Hold on.
12:20Oh, yeah.
12:21That's looking good.
12:22Three, two, one.
12:27Oh!
12:29That was pretty cool.
12:30Yeah.
12:31But you missed.
12:31Dang it.
12:33Oh!
12:34To the right.
12:36Fire!
12:37Oh!
12:38Oh!
12:39This is the one.
12:40I can feel it.
12:41Three, two, one.
12:45Oh, yeah!
12:50Wait!
12:52It's okay!
12:53What?
12:54The drone recovered from that?
12:57That was so cool!
12:58That drone is so much more impressive than the turret.
13:00But lucky for me, the definitely not made up on the spot rules state that if a dart makes contact
13:05with the drone, you get one final bonus shot.
13:14The mega turret had secured...
13:17It's dead!
13:17Omega hits!
13:19Check it out.
13:19You actually did...
13:20Yeah!
13:21What's up now?
13:23Let's see you guys beat this!
13:26Question is, which one of you guys wants to try and top that?
13:29Me!
13:30Oh, God!
13:31First up, we've got Kevin.
13:34Where is Kevin?
13:35He's, uh...
13:36Oh!
13:37Yee-haw!
13:37Woo-hoo!
13:39Yee-haw!
13:40Kevin!
13:41Yeah!
13:42Yeah!
13:42Coming for your drones!
13:43This feels like it's bigger than...
13:46Whoa!
13:47Necessary.
13:48This is the V-Rad cannon.
13:50Avian defense turret.
13:54Avian defense?
13:55So what?
13:56You scare birds with that?
13:57Yeah, and shoot down drones!
13:59And this concept was actually invented 200 years ago by farmers shooting it at hail clouds in the sky to
14:04try and save their crops.
14:05But then they found a far less speculative application was just to shoot it towards birds to scare them away
14:11from eating all the seeds in the field.
14:13You're gonna look so silly if the drone doesn't get shot down with this thing, Kevin!
14:17Giddy up!
14:18And when you mix just the right amount of oxygen and propane in the combustion chamber and then give it
14:22a spark, you basically get a single shot rocket engine.
14:273...2...1...
14:28FIRE!
14:32FIRE!
14:33Wow, Kevin!
14:34Real impressive!
14:41And it absolutely destroyed the drone.
14:45Oh my god!
14:46It, like, actually totally died!
14:48Wow!
14:49That looked like a really good way to kill a drone, actually.
14:52That was really good.
14:53And that's when we realized it was also a great way to play a certain game called Chicken.
14:58Bring it on!
14:59And if you think for a second we were scared to stand before this gigantic cannon...
15:04Why are we doing this?!
15:05I mean, you're right.
15:06But what's even more scary...
15:08Oh!
15:08Oh!
15:09Oh!
15:10Oh my god!
15:12Wait!
15:12Did it hit any of us?
15:14Was doing it over and over again until it found its aim.
15:18Oh!
15:18Why was it right?!
15:19It's coming up towards us!
15:21Oh my god!
15:23I hope it blows your hat off and we can see what you're hiding under there.
15:26Oh!
15:27Oh!
15:33Oh!
15:33Oh!
15:34Oh!
15:34It got my head!
15:37Oh!
15:39Oh!
15:45Oh!
15:46Oh!
15:46Oh!
15:47It's still going!
15:50Oh!
15:51Oh!
15:51Oh my god!
15:53Y en nuestro juego de Chiquen,
15:54nos fueron preparados a llegar más cerca de la canon
15:57como estos chicos, pero nos han ganado de gas fuel,
15:59así que, no, no, no, no, no.
16:01Este es mi invento.
16:03Este es un tesla coilo.
16:05Sabes cuando te rubas en la carpeta y te pierdas un spark?
16:07Sí, sí, sí.
16:08Este es un millió de veces más posible que eso.
16:103, 2, 1.
16:12Tesla coilo!
16:17Y si fuera un concurso para los visuales?
16:20Sí, eso es bastante cool, ¿verdad?
16:22Alan definitely would have won right on the spot,
16:24but it wasn't.
16:25I feel like that's not going to get a drone.
16:28All right, here's my real plan.
16:30Salty, electrically conductive goo.
16:33Is that legal?
16:34What in the world is this?
16:36So this is xanthan gum and salt.
16:38It should conduct electricity.
16:40That nozzle is going to shoot a stream of goo,
16:43so when it touches the drone, it's going to fry it.
16:45Well, it's just salty protein, and it's thick.
16:49It's safe to say I had reservations
16:50about pretty much all of this.
16:52Tesla coil on!
16:54As predicted, the coil on its own
16:55had nowhere near the range to hit the drone.
16:58Goo stream on!
16:59Oh, oh, wow.
17:02Why is it so low?
17:04That's no good.
17:06And it seemed like the goo wouldn't either.
17:08But after a little pressure adjustment...
17:10There we go!
17:11There we go!
17:11...the electric goo gun made contact.
17:14Oh, come on!
17:16Oh, yes!
17:17Oh, yes!
17:18Oh!
17:19And it appeared like Alan had taken it out for good.
17:23That's still, like, trying to be alive.
17:26There was no way to salvage things here, so sadly...
17:29Use your heel, Mark, in one solid hit.
17:31This feels wrong.
17:32We had to put the little guy out of his misery.
17:35Oh, no, Mark!
17:36Mark, it's filtering it again!
17:39I'm so sorry!
17:41Goodbye, little fella.
17:46I said goodbye.
17:48May your microchips forever rest in the watery depths below.
17:52And that's how you kill a drone!
17:53The light's still on.
17:55Oh, no!
17:57All right, Will, I think it's your turn.
17:59It's this.
18:01Drone in a fog machine.
18:02Wait, and special effects?
18:05I didn't know he could order a fog!
18:07But out of the fog, William's creation gloriously emerged.
18:12Sort of.
18:12I want you to hold on to that.
18:14Wait.
18:14And this was the point where I realized Will's drone had taken a sudden interest in what I was holding.
18:19I suddenly feel unsafe!
18:21It's looking at you!
18:22Run away, Mark. Run away!
18:23And it was totally tracking me.
18:26Until it was.
18:27I did finish it just 30 minutes ago.
18:29Will had very ambitiously taken the andro approach of attempting to actively track the target drone.
18:35Ultimately, his hunting drone was using eight overlapping photo detectors to look for a specific IR source on the target
18:41drone I was holding.
18:43And then it would keep itself oriented in the direction where that signal was the strongest.
18:47You have to attach this thing to the target drone for your drone to know where it is?
18:52Uh, yeah.
18:53I mean, how's it going to take it down?
18:55By smashing into it.
18:57Let's do it.
18:58And this is where Will brought in his secret weapon, Peter Shreepel.
19:02But to be fair, all Peter was actually doing was hitting the gas pedal on the drone at the right
19:07time.
19:07All the other choices were being made autonomously by the drone itself.
19:10Okay, I'm taking off and then we're going autonomous.
19:13All right, so it's hunting.
19:16Whoa, it's going towards it.
19:16It's hunting the drone.
19:18Run!
19:18Oh, oh, oh, it missed.
19:20Oh, boy.
19:21Oh, it's coming back.
19:22Okay.
19:23Go!
19:24It reminds me of like, toro, toro.
19:29Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
19:32That looked pretty good.
19:33But after a series of near misses.
19:35Oh, yes.
19:36The hunter got serious.
19:38Oh.
19:39Oh.
19:39Oh.
19:40Oh, oh.
19:41Oh, oh, oh.
19:41Oh, oh, oh, oh.
19:42Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
19:53That's cool.
19:54Time to announce the winner of the drone defense derby.
19:56I'm going to decide, since this is my channel.
19:58And honestly, I got to give this one to William.
20:01Yes!
20:03As much as I hate to say it, I deserve it.
20:06From an engineering standpoint, it's very, very impressive.
20:09And your prize?
20:10You get three hack packs.
20:13Whoa!
20:14Yeah!
20:15Now you guys can, you know, hone those engineering skills in.
20:19And so if you, too, want to hone your own engineering skills,
20:21or heck, even just begin to learn some basic building skills in the easiest way possible
20:26while having a ton of fun at the same time,
20:28be sure to check out that link in the video description to crunchlabs.com
20:32to get your free hack pack box as the early adopter special.
20:51Thank you.
20:52Thank you.
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