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.

Comments

Cheaper in KY

[Anonymous Coward]

Cheaper to get an armed kentucky redneck drunk to bring one down.

Not surprising

[LaurenCates]

It's also been established that sound can put out fires.

http://physicsworld.com/cws/ar...

Unpractical

[Himmy32]

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.

Re:Unpractical

[PolygamousRanchKid]

140 Db causes permanent hearing damage and that only makes it effective to 40 meters.

That is very good. You don't want to take out the drone anyway. Rather the dork who is flying the drone. If you take out the drone, the dork will just buy another one on Amazon, and come back the next day. Drones are cheap now, so that anyone can afford one.

What you want to do, is to triangulate the control signal, and make a polite visit to the pilot.

I have been flying RC helicopters for about 20 years now, and I am appalled at the way some folks fly them dangerously in public.

And so can fire hoses

[HighOrbit]

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.

Re:Not all gyros are mechanical

[rwise2112]

I guess this would not work on optical gyros?

It will if you generate the sound with something, say, like a RPG.

Re:Not all gyros are mechanical

[rjune]

Number 4 bird shot also has a sound that be effective against drones.

Re:That is, until...

[drinkypoo]

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.