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Exams are stressful, so it's understandable that some people would want to circumvent the hard work of studying by instead cheating. For students taking the national university entrance exams in China, there's now one more little thing to worry about: drones, deployed to catch cheaters.
The drone is a hexarotor and, as reported by China's state-owned ECNS news service, it will scan for suspicious radio signals from exam-takers. While that won't stop any cheaters who use low-tech methods to get around difficult questions, it will detect any number of advanced methods that rely on the test-taker exchanging information with a second party outside the exam room. These methods include cameras hidden in glasses with transmitters hidden in water bottles, cell phones hooked up to flesh-colored wireless headphones, and pen cameras that film the exam-takers' test.
The anti-cheating drone hovers at 1600 feet above the ground, and can travel 3000 feet from where it's deployed. If it eavesdrops on a radio signal from one of these devices, the drone forwards the location to operators, who can see where that exam taker is on their mobile device. Cheaters who get caught can face legal penalties. ECNS states that the exam drone led to the arrest of 9 suspects in 2014.
http://www.popsci.com/anti-cheating-drone-will-watch-exam-takers-china
[Also Covered By]: Quartz, Daily Mail, Washington Post, and Wired UK.
Original Submission
(Score: 4, Interesting) by n1 on Sunday June 07 2015, @06:31PM
I'd say you're counting on a lot of stupidity from students and the cheaters among them.
If they cant spot a cheap unmodified drone they could buy off alibaba for $50 for what it is, they're probably not smart enough to cheat. Fixed camera CCTV systems (with or without PTZ) and radio signal scanning doesn't need a drone and would achieve the same results, if not better.
Now if it's part of a wider plan to see how students cope with those kind of distractions in a high-stress environment, then that's a different thing entirely. Time to get used to drones flying around the factory floor or open-plan office/call center.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by khchung on Monday June 08 2015, @04:08AM
Fixed camera CCTV systems (with or without PTZ) and radio signal scanning doesn't need a drone and would achieve the same results, if not better.
I think you don't understand the sheer *scale* of the exam this is about.
Think: every one who finished high school is going to take this exam, so it practically means almost every high school will be an exam venue. Either that, or non-educational venues (sports stadiums) will be rented and retrofitted for a couple weeks.
How much money/time/disruption would it costs to fit CCTV systems in nearly every high school, (not to mention stadiums which you can't do that), compared to just buying a large number of such drones that you can deploy to all venues in just days in advance? And what happens if the venue need to be moved (from one room to another without CCTV) for some reason (water leakage, electrical problems, etc)? How about future upgrades? What if one CCTV malfunctioned during the exam (cue massive vandalism of CCTVs right before the exam)?
From the practical POV, using drones *is* the most practical, feasible and flexible thing to do.