Spatial and frequency characterization of the noise generated by the propellers of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) in acoustic localization tasks

摘要

In the field of surveillance applications for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), detecting and locating people in low visibility environments is a complex task. In these scenarios, the use of conventional cameras is not feasible, and the use of alternative technologies to the optical ones is needed. The authors carried out previous works to analyse the viability of using an acoustic camera located in the proximity of an UAV to locate people asking for help. This acoustic camera is based on a MEMS microphone array where frequency and spatial filtering techniques, based on a broadband acoustic beamformer, are applied. The work presented in this paper shows the characterization of the noise generated by the propellers of a UAV, in order to discriminate this noise from the cries for help in the acoustic localization tasks carried out by the acoustic camera, For the tested scenario, the MEMS microphone array is onboard the UAV, mounted on a Gimbal that stabilizes the array position.