German Railways To Test Anti-Graffiti Drones 208
garymortimer writes "Germany's national railway company, Deutsche Bahn, plans to test small drones to try to reduce the amount of graffiti being sprayed on its property. The idea is to use airborne infra-red cameras to collect evidence, which could then be used to prosecute vandals who deface property at night. A company spokesman said drones would be tested at rail depots soon."
Anti-Gravity! (Score:5, Funny)
At first glance I was extremely excited to hear about anti-gravity trains, but then my joy was quickly destroyed by graffiti.
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I think they all called Maglev
The same here! (Score:2)
EXACTLY what happened to me - for 1/10 of a second I thought I was reading about anti-GRAVITY in trains. Then I suddenly remembered which lousy century I was born into and it all fell apart even before the part of my brain responsible for reading comprehension could finish its job.
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Then I suddenly remembered which lousy century I was born into
Well, and I read this sentence of yours as "which lousy country" and thought that you were a compaining German DB customer. :-) (BTW, I've also read it as anti-gravity. I guess I need new glasses! I've heard Google started making some nice ones...)
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You Fucking Name It.
Can't wait for the first of those drones to be properly bombed.
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In other recursive news (Score:5, Funny)
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"Germany's national railway company, Deutsche Bahn, plans to test larger, armed drones to try to reduce the theft of small drones introduced earlier. The idea is to use airborne infra-red cameras to collect evidence, which could then be used to prosecute vandals who steal property at night. A company spokesman said drones would be tested at rail depots soon."
Fixed that for ya.
Germany's national railway company, Deutsche Bahn plans to build bunkers and rally the survivors after the introduction and subsequent rebellion of armed drones.
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Turns out an empty spray paint can can really wreck havoc on a single rotor craft, quad rotors are currently being updated to give themselves the capability to 'limp home' on just 3 rotors to foil these artists once and for all.
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Following inspiration from video games, quad rotors have been programmed to attack vandals with their rotor blades.
In other unrelated news, crowbars have experience a large surge in sales.
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They also plan on testing how well the drones function after being spray painted.
Anti-gravity (Score:5, Insightful)
Raise your hand if you read that too.
Paint me disappointed :(
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The opposite of gravity is comedy.
Germany vs. USA (Score:2)
If America was involved, our drones would "fix" the graffiti with a Hellfire missile. I like the German solution better.
Ironic that 60 years later, we're more inclined to use killer flying robots to assassinate our enemies than are the Germans.
Re:Germany vs. USA (Score:4, Funny)
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Smile! (Score:2)
*whirrrrrrrrrr* *tick tick* [modreactor.com]
Expensive high-tech instead of simplicity (Score:3)
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As well as obvious to cameras. Yet the idea that lighting things up "deters crime" continues to exist.
Total surveillance will stop crime (Score:5, Insightful)
We can stop essentially all crime, or at least prosecute it after it happens by installing surveillance everywhere. We need to decide where we are willing to use this technology. This particular application seems pretty harmless - as long as the railway companies don't decide that now that they have the drones they might as well monitor employee efficiency.....
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different concept from this article, a company policing its own property with surveillance system. no different from you or I doing it for our business or home. police can subpoena for records.
Employee Efficiency (Score:2)
If shareholders could build a drone to track their companies CEO and other officers and make sure they are getting an honest day's work for their pay, I'm all for it.
The ROI for tracking thousands of minimum wage grunts around to save a few pennies isn't worth it. One drone to keep an eye on $5 million a year? It could pay off.
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We can stop essentially all crime, or at least prosecute it after it happens by installing surveillance everywhere
Well I suppose one could you take a look at the UK and their surveillance everywhere idea and how it's not doing squat for reducing crime rates. Rather with fewer bodies on the ground, criminals know exactly when and where to hit because of how long it takes police to respond. And how to foil the system as well.
Really if they wanted to reduce graffiti, they'd have people on the ground doing patrols. It works, even if it's random. They don't need to be peace officers, or the german equivalent but rather
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Easy [popcenter.org] enough. [popcenter.org] And an extra. [guardian.co.uk] POP is considered the defacto source for police services around the world if you're wondering.
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The German railway unions wouldn't be happy with that.
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Vandalizing property is not speech guy.... Not saying graffiti doesn't have any merits. Just that your comparing apple to oranges. If the paint like washed off with the rain it would be more like free speech.
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Fix a paintball gun on them (Score:5, Funny)
and give the vandals a taste of their own medicine.
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This is actually a seriously great idea!
Create some kind of Gatling paint gun firing 500-1000 paint balls a minute at very high velocity and use that. Any vandals hit would be knocked down and completely covered in paint. Even if he got up and away, he'll be easy to find due to the extreme amount of paint on him. Use a paint that easily removable from the trains but hard to remove from skin and clothing. Now that's a taste of their own medicine!
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Public murals (Score:2)
When I was in Germany in the late 80s I remember seeing a big Hamburg apartment complex covered in graffiti. Seems they still have them: Graffiti Apartment Building – Berlin, Germany | sketchy.com [sketchy.com], just one of many examples you can find. But apparently it isn't enough to keep vandalism from occurring.
Instead of hunting graffiti (Score:2)
They should fix their trains and tracks so the trains are no longer later that often. Since they started becoming a privatized company, they raised prices and lowered service quality. They let the infrastructure rot and the new infrastructure they build is crumbling after five years.
Maybe they should send armed drones after the management.
BTW: The former CEO of the German railway is now in charge of the not yet completed new airport Berlin-Brandenburg. ;-)
Re:Instead of hunting graffiti (Score:5, Interesting)
You realise that often times train delays are caused by graffiti?
The London Tube essentially killed graffiti by refusing to run any trains with any graffiti at all - panels or throwups.
Obviously, this leads directly to delays.
Furthermore, if the company is dropping 10M on cleaning per year, that's 10M on maintenance that it's (presumably) not spending..
Graffiti strike drones! (Score:2)
It's only a matter of time now before someone mounts a stencil and a servo actuated sprayer on a quadcopter and starts putting graffiti in places that are difficult to reach!
I don't understand this at all. (Score:2)
Couldn't you just use cameras? What possible advantage do expensive flying drones have?
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Couldn't you just use cameras? What possible advantage do expensive flying drones have?
Perhaps it's cheaper to deploy a few drones randomly, than to mount cameras all over the place? Suppose you have a thousand places that are graffiti targets. That would require a thousand cameras at, say $1000/pop to deploy (assuming a single camera can take in the entire target). That's a million dollars. For that kind of money you can get drones that will patrol those places, covering nooks and crannies that a fixed camera couldn't, and you have the added benefits of being able to follow the perpetrat
Cue defaced drones... (Score:2)
...in 3...2...1...
I can imagine them dragging wide ribbons with guerrilla art across the public space.
Why drones? (Score:2)
Rheinmetall (Score:3)
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Next move is to install some of the "other" Rheinmetall products on the drones and the grafitti problem will be solved fully automatically >:->
Me thinks the smallest Rheinmetal products would be far to heavy for small drones. Maybe you were thinking of Gloch.
WTF (Score:4)
Sorry, but WTF Deutsche Bahn???
There have been 3 trains that derailed in Stuttgart last year, and one runaway train that luckily didn't kill anybody because it happened at 4am.
Stuttgart is the city that gave you Mercedes Benz, Bosch and Porsche.
They seriously have better things to do than to care about graffitis.
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No.
It's not "someone somewhere", it is the same entity : D-Bahn.
Their core business is actually to transport people safely, on time and at a reasonable cost.
They fail on those 3 points, and concentrating on anti-graffiti drones surely won't help.
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Don't worry, the spray paint lobby will talk to the right persons and make this nonsense stop.
Re:Techy drone-boners must stop. (Score:4, Interesting)
Graffiti is a huge problem in Germany. All the graffiti is really embarrassing when I'm in Berlin with people from abroad.
Less graffiti probably means more tourists and less service outages because the train you were supposed to take is currently being cleaned, so there you get your tax dollars right back. (Not to mention that getting caught means you have to foot the bill for the removal of your graffiti, and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be too much of a hassle to get you to pay some fraction of whatever the drones and their infrastructure cost, too.)
And most important, less graffiti also means fewer people stressed from eye cancer, and possibly fewer people who think it's okay to be a criminal.
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At least when graffiti is found under bridges and on old rusty depot buildings around rail roads (you'll see this in Strasbourg for example) it's tolerable, because those bridges and buildings are truly ugly, I mean depressingly ugly.
When the train cars are being vandalised this way it's just retarded.
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If you want those bridges to be painted, then go through the appropriate channels. There is never an excuse to illegally graffiti.
sure there is. first off it's cheap. second, sometimes it's funny. third, it's convenient since going through "appropriate channels" is boring, takes years and results in boring shit being approved.
just plain boring gang tagging on the other hand or embarrassingly ugly IRA murals etc shit..
They should consider the art alternative (Score:2)
Then they came to a very simple idea : ask a few artist and grafiti maker to make a painting , real art, with a subject.
Not only those are beautiful, but grafiti maker seems to respect those are and only tags blank walls..
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Same problem here in Italy and same solution.
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I pass a memorial to Skeam every morning on the way to Waterloo East. No tagger has ever touched it and the authorities have left it alone too.
Then again since Tox and Dean got sent down there's been a lot less new tagging around.
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We have plenty of murals of differing styles and qualities of artwork and they all get ugly tags right over the top of them.
Perth, WA.
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The only way to fix the graffiti problem (on trains) is to guard the parked trains using guards, dogs and electric fences with razor wire. If done right the trains can be kept clean except for quick tags done on trains in service. Of course you will see 'artists' (vandals) getting bitten, cut, electrified and arrested but soon even these morons learn and find other things to break.
Re:Techy drone-boners must stop. (Score:5, Interesting)
I visited Germany recently and enjoyed the graffiti tremendously. While there's some utter crap, I found the graffiti to be of significantly higher quality than what I typically encounter in my home country.
Less graffiti probably means more tourists (...)
I highly doubt that - possibly even on the contrary. Graffiti is an important part of what makes Berlin Berlin.
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I visited Germany recently and enjoyed the graffiti tremendously. While there's some utter crap, I found the graffiti to be of significantly higher quality than what I typically encounter in my home country.
USian here, where graffiti is promptly removed, thankfully, because it's usually awful. But I think I know what you mean about Berlin, though I haven't been there personally. I have, however, been to Athens, Greece (around 2007). I swear, that city is just about the ideal environment for graffiti artists:
a. Nearly every building is made from concrete; my tour guide told me that there is a large concrete industry in Athens and that it is basically always the most economical building material.
b. Gen
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Graffiti is an important part of what makes Berlin Berlin.
Agreed; it Takes My Breath Away!
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Save the money on drones. Legalize it. Reward the more artistic ones. Televise the awards, add commercials, Make money off them.
But won't that just make graffiti worse? NI! I say Ni! at you!! It will make the folks doing graffiti STOP. They won't want to be seen as "working for the man" and all that jazz.
Remove the challenge, don't escalate it. The taggers already out-do each other to get to tag even more insane spots without getting caught. If anyone can just spray paint anything, no one will
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Well set out side of Germany and the stories told by Germans is all about how wonderful the German trains system are, and how advanced they are compared to anything else in the world, and how everyone could take a lesson from Germany.
Re:Techy drone-boners must stop. (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not German, but their railway is very good.
A group ticket for five people for a 120km journey last week (on a week-day) cost EUR35. We were over an hour early, due to a tail-wind on the flight, and were surprised that the booked ticket was still valid for the earlier train.
A similar journey in the UK (where I live) would have cost a *lot* more, like EUR15-20 each, and we couldn't have got the earlier train without buying new tickets. However, the British train would probably have been longer (more space) and faster. (The German high-speed ICE is faster than the British intercity trains, but the German local trains seem to be slower than normal British trains.)
Oh, and the German trains and surroundings definitely have more graffiti. So does Germany in general.
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People can be overly critical of a good system on a bad day if they have high expectations from it.
Re:Techy drone-boners must stop. (Score:4, Informative)
People can be overly critical of a good system on a bad day if they have high expectations from it.
Believe me, I know. I'm British, and live in London.
On holiday in Germany, my friends mostly complained about how bad British [everything] was in comparison, which gets old pretty quickly. I think it's worse than the general complaining -- without comparison -- back in Britain, since at least there I can pretend people haven't travelled much and don't know any better.
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German ticket-prices make NO sense.
Went to Köln last summer.
Regular ticket: 35 euro
First class ticket: 28 euro
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I'm wondering what people you spoke to.
German tourists in the US. Do you require names?
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NO government service should EVER be treated as a for-profit business.
I agree this is a bad idea.
I was thinking like an American. Our shitty train transit is privatized ;p You may be right in your case.
Actually the few passenger cars that do run are not bad. I liked the trains in NYC and the ones that went to the smaller cities outside of it. They work fairly well in my humble opinion. The few times I used them as a visitor. They are a far cry more imperfect then the stories I hear about European trains though.
The German train system (Score:2)
When I can I choose in the EU to go by train. Just back and used 3 trains. Even reasonably priced and good food! And even the buses operated by the German DB system are top notch. I'm comparing to the US counterparts which I also use occasionally.
You want graffiti, go to Italy.
Re: Techy drone-boners must stop. (Score:2)
More like 35000 fatalities.
Re: Techy drone-boners must stop. (Score:3)
It's the same north of Germany. We see a lot of cable copper theft, I don't think anyone cares about the graffiti - this sounds like someone tried to find an angle for the story but knew jack shit about the situation. A camera on a stick is equally good at spotting thieves and vandals.
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There's solar panels and turbines for power. Hook that up to a wireless / cellular / microwave network and you can park it anywhere on the rail network.
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There's solar panels and turbines for power. Hook that up to a wireless / cellular / microwave network and you can park it anywhere on the rail network.
Great idea. Should be worth something on the black market.
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Re:Techy drone-boners must stop. (Score:5, Interesting)
Read AC's post.
Trains are fuel efficient. Right here in the US, it's been demonstrated that a train can move freight for a small fraction of the cost that trucks can move freight. The only problem with trains here, is that they are never on time. You can't send a refrigerated car filled with vegetables from Yuma to Philadelphia, because you never know when it will arrive. An 18-wheeler gets it there reliably, in 4 days with a solo driver, 2 days with team drivers. But - the COST is ridiculous.
If the idiots who manage the trains could just figure out how to SCHEDULE the damned things, we could save tons of money on everything.
Including passenger service.
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I think it really must be that the
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I've done some calculations based on the main London-Bristol line in the UK that runs close to where I live. Based on a 500 seat train passing every 5 minutes during the peak, that's 6000 passengers per hour*. Compare this with cars traveling at 100km/h, each 10m apart carrying 1 passenger, that's 10000 passengers per hour. (*My guess for the train seems to be more or less in line with the offical UK stats at http://assets.dft.gov.uk/statistics/rele [dft.gov.uk]
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But it largely worked on the trains. Nobody saw the graffiti, and the taggers went elsewhere.
I assume your argument is that we should have let them paint the train, in the vain hope that it wouldn't spread to buildings.
Pretty short sited, in that graffiti on buildings preceded trains.
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Or hire human guards. You know. Employing a few people to politely escort the kids out of the train station. I would do that job. Would have no problem detaining the ones that would not politely leave.
Re:obviously (Score:5, Insightful)
Or hire human guards. You know. Employing a few people to politely escort the kids out of the train station. I would do that job. Would have no problem detaining the ones that would not politely leave.
It doesn't happen in the train station.
Its actually when the trains are parked that they get spray painted. Some of this Graffiti are elaborate works of (misplaced) art, that take hours to apply.
Railroads are starting to fence off their switch and storage yards, and put cameras high up on polls, which makes far more sense than a drone. One guy can watch 50 cameras, but each drone takes a separate operator to fly and monitor.
Drones are a stupid idea.
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One guy can watch 50 cameras, but each drone takes a separate operator to fly and monitor.
Depends on how autonomous the drones are. An autopilot system running them around defined points (and allowing you to take manual control to get better view if you see something happening) shouldn't be too difficult.
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And cost effective too compared to a less than $200 dollar pole mounted cameras.
The more autonomous you try to make it the higher the cost. And when the vandals fling a chunk of dog chain at it, the total investment is lost.
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And cost effective too compared to a less than $200 dollar pole mounted cameras.
One each for a couple dozen of poles. With miles of cable. Which can get damaged far easier than a drone (because they don't move).
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Cable? No WIFI in your world?
A couple of cameras can watch Acres of trains. [wikimedia.org] (zoom in, there are antennas on top of those lamp poles.
Start adding up $200 cameras until you get to the price of a single drone. Go ahead, I'll wait.
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You have obviously never seen the train parking zones (I live near one), and you have never seen the prices of heated, weather-protected PTZ HD cameras. And a drone is "shared equipment" that can easily be moved to a new spot.
I don't even want to talk about the cost of setting up "poles" (you seem to be imagining a stick in the ground) that are fit for use in that kind of area. I'm not even getting into the legal concerns of setting up PTZ cameras close to residential areas. Even the potential (!) to watch
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Cable? No WIFI in your world?
They've still got to be powered, and I'm not at all convinced that solar would do it without costing far more than a cable run. Railway operators know all about running cables.
That said, I suspect that advantage of a drone is that it allows you to use an expensive setup and move it to somewhere else easily once you've dealt with the problem in one location. Putting in lots of fixed hardware by contrast requires a lot more investment in the construction work to deal with a problem that stops (at least for a
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Go look at the image.
There is plenty of power on the light poles which are already in place.
And a wifi weather proof camera with remote tilt and pan, and built in motion and infrared detection and auto alarm triggering codts less than 200 on Amazon .
If you order it today you could prove to yourself by the weekend just how silly a drone is.
By the way, fully autonomous drones are military only and you don't get to fly them over cities.
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Railroads are starting to fence off their switch and storage yards, and put cameras high up on polls,
What I don't understand is who keeps voting for all of those cameras, and how come they do so well in the polls.
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One guy can watch 50 cameras, but each drone takes a separate operator to fly and monitor.
A drone takes an operator? What kind of zinc plated, vacuum tube cultured rock did you climb out from under.
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Hmmm. Was wondering why the trains weren't stored overnight in maintenance bays.
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There are no maintenance Bays that can accommodate an entire railway systems trains.
Look how many and how long [onlinenigeria.com]. (And that's just a small part of the fleet).
New York City has an equally large problem [nydailynews.com] and its only one city.
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I think if this cheesy, childish and dubstep-overfilled series had become popular...
...then we'd know what the hell you were talking about.
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First episode opened with a scene with some teenagers trying to graffiti a wall while avoiding surveillance drones.
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I find the shotgun is the best way to bring them down.
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Me too, however after coming back to 2013 I thought that oleophobic coating would solve the problem at the source.
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