Key Bridge developed and fielded a prototype optical UAV detector using pointing algorithms from the Phoenix Mars Lander and custom image processing technologies.
Autonomous Detection of Small UAVs (Anti-UAV)
- Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) provide important tactical and strategic capabilities to the war fighter.
- The American monopoly in UAV technology and deployed systems is quickly eroding.
- UAV detection is complicated by their small size and radar cross section.
Use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) by the Military has rapidly expanded in the last 3-5 years and this growth is expected to continue in the future because of the important tactical and strategic capabilities UAVs present to the war fighter.
The scale of this expanded use and forward deployment is evidenced by noting that UAVs and UAV-originated information now represent a significant and rapidly growing portion of the US military’s consumption of satellite resources, far surpassing the Military’s traditional voice and data communication bandwidth needs.
Unfortunately, an American monopoly in UAV technology and deployed systems is quickly eroding. Low-cost, hobbyist type aircraft combined with powerful, low-cost mobile computers and sensors create a low threshold for adversaries to develop, field and operate UAV-based sensor systems against US and allied forces.
In the civilian sector relatively large remote controlled model airplanes developed by and sold to hobbyists and enthusiasts, when combined with an autonomous control system, create a credible lift and delivery capability for stand-off terrorist attack.
Anti-UAV methods and technologies are scarce. The use of RADAR for proximity detection of small UAVs must have limited utility due to the low radar cross section of such small structures and composite materials most model airplanes and helicopters employ in their construction.
For this project we leveraged prior art solutions for similar object discovery and tracking problems, combined with novel near and wide field optical and infra-red imaging detectors, to solve the problem of UAV proximity detection within local airspace or regions of interest.
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