Police chasing down criminals on hoverbikes? It’s not science fiction anymore

It may sound like something out of “Star Wars” or “Back to the Future,” but it’s definitely real. Hoverbikes are here — and police are interested.

The Dubai Police announced at the GITEX trade show and conference that they are partnering with Russian drone-builder Hoversurf to outfit their officers with a fleet of flying hoverbikes. The idea is that the bikes can blast over traffic and weave through buildings to get to emergency sites faster than automobiles.

“Our commander found a team specialized for drones, and they are going to study this more. This team is gonna suggest how we make it fine for policing. From there, they will decide where to use it and for what,” Saif Salem Al Kaabi, an engineer with the Dubai Police, told Gulf News in a video interview.

The electric-powered hoverbikes work for up to 20 minutes and take about three hours to charge, Al Kaabi told Gulf News. He said the bikes have been programmed to fly a maximum height of about five meters (about 16 feet), can carry up to 600 pounds and can travel at speeds of up to 100 kilometers per hour (about 62 mph).

The Dubai Police are no strangers to cutting-edge technologies. The department already has a robot police officer and unmanned drone cars that can pursue fleeing suspects. The hoverbike can do that too, in fact — according to the company’s website, it can fly automatically like a normal drone if a human operator isn’t available.

The company said it focused on making the machine the size of “a compact dirt bike,” Hoversurf wrote on its website. “The machine basically surfs through the air by changing altitude and direction.”

The hoverbike first made waves earlier in 2017, when tech enthusiasts expressed equal parts awe and terror at the contraption. New Atlas said the bike was best suited for “aspiring amputees” because of the closeness of the spinning rotor blades to the operator. The Verge recommended it for the type of buyer with “a willingness to have your legs amputated in the name of extreme sports.”

Those reports don’t seem to worry Dubai police officers, who say they’re going to keep testing it and hope to begin using it in the field soon.

“We can use it right now, because it’s working and we tested it,” Al-Kaabi told Gulf News. “But our team will need more time to study.”

This story was originally published October 16, 2017 at 4:03 PM with the headline "Police chasing down criminals on hoverbikes? It’s not science fiction anymore."