What are the punishments for "taking down a quadcopter? Ever since seeing Bezos on 60 minutes, i keep thinking that this would be a good hobby. If the copter was just re-routed to a different locations and not harmed, would this still be a crime. Most likely.
I assume taking control of the machine with out permission would not be easy, but possible. Also a game show where the copters fight to the death would fill the void of "Robot Wars" being of TV.
Right now taking control is not that hard[1], since most quadcopters are unprotected, but I suspect more autonomous versions (which are supposed to fly without line-of-sight by the operator) will probably only accept encrypted and authenticated packets.
Parrot AR Drones work by creating a dedicated WiFi access point. It's not that hard to hack into. Because of the limited range of the WiFi signal, I'd still classify AR Drones as toys.
The vast majority of RC planes, cars, multirotors, etc. work with a 2.4Ghz transmitter (TX) and receiver (RX). In the old days you'd claim a frequency, put the corresponding crystal in your TX, and hope that nobody else would use that frequency. Nowadays we have Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS) or Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS) to ensure that you're not interfering with someone else's TX/RC. These signals are a lot more difficult to hijack.
I assume taking control of the machine with out permission would not be easy, but possible. Also a game show where the copters fight to the death would fill the void of "Robot Wars" being of TV.