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Sounds Can Knock Drones Out of the Sky
angry tapir writes: Next week at the USENIX Security Symposium, researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in Daejon, South Korea, are presenting research into knocking drones out of the sky using directed sound waves. They target a component crucial to every drone's ability to fly: its gyroscope. "A gyroscope keeps a drone balanced, providing information on its tilt, orientation and rotation, allowing for micro-adjustments that keep it aloft. Hobbyist and some commercial drones use inexpensive gyroscopes that are designed as integrated circuit packages." For some drones, the gyroscope and its housing have a resonant frequency that's within the audible spectrum. By targeting the drone with sound waves of that frequency, the gyroscope will begin to generate erroneous data, leading to a crash.
Cheaper to get an armed kentucky redneck drunk to bring one down.
It's also been established that sound can put out fires.
http://physicsworld.com/cws/ar...
Some people don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in The Patriarchy.
For this attack is great if you have to identify the model/gyroscope and have done testing to get a value of the resonant frequencies of the gyroscope before hand and send a sound loud enough to disable it. 140 Db causes permanent hearing damage and that only makes it effective to 40 meters. I hardly think a system that deafens everyone in a large radius to take down a drone for the off chance that you even know the frequency to disable a drone is hardly practical. And if like the ones tested in the article you can attach a speaker to the device before hand, I doubt you even need to think about a system like this to disable the drone.
Well if they are talking about the toy in the picture and 40 meters is the height, a fire hose or pitched base ball can bring it down too. If it is low enough to be brought down by a fire hose then it is too low and a nuisance.
What would be more interesting is if sound can bring down a more advanced aircraft that relies on computerized gyroscope stabilization like a F-35 from a few kilometers.
If you were here a bit over a decade ago, you remember these little babies the HERF guns, http://tech.slashdot.org/story... & http://science.slashdot.org/st.... They would probably work on drones (and more). Given the Inverse-square law, I don't remember what the range might be though.
The Blue Note of Death.
Light can be highly directional, yet it obeys the inverse square law.
Time for bed, said Zebedee - boing
Yeah but you are not going to have a ring laser or fibre optic gyroscope in a consumer "drone". It is going to be a cheap MEMS gyroscope, not something that costs thousands of dollars.
Apart from anything else I suspect that optical gyroscopes need things like export license. Just take a look at the of example ring laser applications on the wikipedia page. It includes things like Trident missiles and a large range of military aircraft.
In fact a little further Googling shows gyroscopes that are advertised as "Non-ITAR", which should tell you all you need to know.
Since you can buy fiber optic gyroscopes on Alibaba for under USD$20, I think issue of US-centric export controls is moot.
This entire attack mode is now a worthless endeavour given this publicity. Anyone with the inclination can modify the case to prevent resonation.
I guess this would not work on optical gyros?
It will if you generate the sound with something, say, like a RPG.
"For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert"
And say "Muad'Dib" really loud. Take you spice first so you don't run out of juice. Only works with blue eyed people.
I guess this would not work on optical gyros?
No, to take out drones with optical gyros, folks will be using light wave guns, instead of sound wave guns.
If you give MacGyver two fistfuls of pen pointer lasers, duct tape, chewing gum, and a Wonderbra, he will MacGyver you an array laser cannon that will be able to take out an optical gyroscope drone. And a lot of other things that don't have optical gyroscope drones.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
As is the case in an arms race.
Perhaps eventually we'll have air guns firing very fine lengths of tungsten wire to physically foul the propellers.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Number 4 bird shot also has a sound that be effective against drones.
Perhaps eventually we'll have air guns firing very fine lengths of tungsten wire to physically foul the propellers.
You don't need anything so exotic; cheap and readily available nylon monofilament will do just fine. But if I were going to use something fancy, I'd use carbon fiber thread.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I guess this would not work on optical gyros?
No, to take out drones with optical gyros, folks will be using light wave guns, instead of sound wave guns.
If you give MacGyver two fistfuls of pen pointer lasers, duct tape, chewing gum, and a Wonderbra, he will MacGyver you an array laser cannon that will be able to take out an optical gyroscope drone. And a lot of other things that don't have optical gyroscope drones.
Are you kidding? He could defeat a stealth fighter with all that equipment! Too much.
moot! dammit. SMH
If you are going to shoot at it with a pellet gun, skip the hassle of trailing a thread and just shoot it directly with the pellet or BlackBerry or .22LR
The problem with that is that with many designs, it will take many shots to have a hope of reliably disabling the model. A lot of these things are just a big wad of polystyrene, which can take a whole lot of hits without really caring if they're not really good ones. Then there's the ones made of carbon fiber rods, yeah that stuff is fragile in its own way but if you don't get a solid hit with your pellet you can't expect to do anything good. Props are fragile but there's a substantial chance of a miss there for obvious reasons... unless your projectile is trailing something.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm not sure anybody knows but it's highly plausable that an optical gyro resonating at an audio frequency would be just as disabling.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds