Dubai Police Will Be Patrolling In Style Using Hoverbikes

The Dubai police, which already has luxury patrol cars, self-driving pursuit drones, and a robot officer, just announced it will soon have officers buzzing around on electric hoverbikes around the skies in Star Wars-style. The police in Dubai are hopeful that the technology will allow them to quickly access hard to reach places, such as areas with a lot of traffic.

The Scorpion hoverbike, exhibited at the biggest technology expo in the gulf region and built by a Russian company called Hoversurf, has been likened to a rideable drone, and is capable of flying with or without a pilot. Though the bike won’t fly higher than 20 feet, the Dubai police say that the hoverbike “will be deployed as a first-responder vehicle to get into hard-to-reach places where larger vehicles can’t go”.

The Hoversurf's concept vehicle - Scorpion-3, features a built-in safety system during its development that kept the pilot from losing control and going too fast or too high, but it's unclear if the model the Dubai police is adopting will have those safeguards. The Hoverbike can reach a height of five meters if mounted and can fly at up to 70 km/h. It can be also controlled remotely. The Hoverbike can carry up to 300kg and fly up to 25 minutes on a full battery. It’s uncertain when exactly these bikes will hit the streets but as Hoversurf’s website says: “ The future is closer than it seems”.

Buffing up its reputation as the world’s most futuristic city, the hoverbikes knit into an array of other technological innovations, from replacing security checks with face-scanning at airports, to establishing the first major property development to accept bitcoin as payment.