The emergence of new technologies for UAV systems and their commercial availability creates a potential asymmetric threat situation, which cannot be satisfactorily countered with existing sensor technology. In addition to the threat posed by terrorist individuals or groups using UAVs, it is specifically military systems that use (semi-)automatically controlled UAVs for modern warfare and are clearly superior to existing defense systems. In particular, the rapid development of drone technology in terms of autonomous flight maneuvers, intelligent collision avoidance, robust communications, and swarm architectures requires new defense strategies for different attack scenarios.

Currently, multimodal approaches are being investigated in which UAVs can be detected, localized, and neutralized using a composite of different sensors. In the development of such multi-sensor solutions for detection and localization, the acoustic domain has emerged as an indispensable element. However, existing systems using one or more acoustic sensors primarily focus on stationary operation and detection of a single drone.

The goal of this project is to develop a mobile-use acoustic sensor system that can detect and track multiple drones based on direction. In addition to algorithms for acoustic detection, this requires sound source localization and extraction methods specially adapted for this application. Particular innovation content consists in the fusion of localization and detection of sound events, which is necessary to fulfill the requirements of the desired sensor system. The acoustic sensor system is to be integrated into existing C2 systems of the BMLV and its performance evaluated in the course of field tests and trials.