Dedrone Keeps Away Drones Over Presidential Debates

Allegations and insults may have been flying over recent U.S. presidential debates, but unauthorized drones were kept at bay thanks to a leading drone-detection company.

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department deployed a drone detection and counter-drone solution from Dedrone during the Oct. 20 debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

According to a company press release, Dedrone partnered with AirVu to provide the LVMPD with a network of DroneTrackers, a system that detects and identifies errant UAVs using acoustic, RF and visual arrays. The no-drone zone extended several hundred meters from the debate venue beyond a campus perimeter. The system integrated and transmitted the data to the police operations center.

“Even though Las Vegas has hosted heads of state and presidents, the presidential debate coupled with the large crowd that it drew, posed a unique set of risks,” LVMPD Assistant Sheriff Tom Roberts said. “We were able to seamlessly integrate the tracker into our safety plan. Having technology that will protect us from the air and provide real-time information was a huge advantage to having a safe and uneventful evening.”

Police in Nassau County, N.Y. also installed DroneTrackers to monitor drone flights during the Sept. 26 debate at Hofstra University.

“Protecting the public from malicious drones is increasingly on the agenda of today’s security agencies,” Dedrone CEO Jörg Lamprecht said. “Airspace security is now as vital as security on the ground. We are very proud that our technology was selected to protect such a high-level national event, and that we were able to contribute to a successful outcome.”

DroneTracker is equipped with an industrial standard HD camera and audio sensors that interact with a cloud-computing, “drone DNA” database which collects and cross-references sound signatures from several drone models and updates automatically as new models are entered.

Last year, the company raised $2.9 million in start-up funding, including venture capital investor Target Partners and successful security entrepreneur Tom Noonan (Internet Security Systems, JouleX). In May, Dedrone,raised $10 million in Series A VC funding.