Czech developer Neuron Soundware has unveiled the Sound Shield, a passive acoustic shield that uses artificial intelligence to detect and track drones by the sound of their engines. The technology is expected to be a cheap and effective alternative to traditional radar systems.
Czech developer Neuron Soundware has unveiled the Sound Shield, a passive acoustic shield that uses artificial intelligence to detect and track drones by the sound of their engines. The technology is expected to be a cheap and effective alternative to traditional radar systems.
The development is reported by «Military» with reference to the Czech publication Armadni noviny. According to the authors of the project, the impetus for the creation of the system was the war in Ukraine, which clearly demonstrated how relatively cheap drones are capable of paralyzing critical infrastructure and assets worth billions of euros. Against the background of these threats, European countries are looking for reliable tools to protect thousands of kilometers of their borders.
Traditional active radars are not always able to effectively detect small objects at low altitudes, and their deployment is also financially costly. Instead, the Sound Shield system is based on a network of completely passive nEdge Mini sensors that do not emit any signals. This makes them completely invisible to enemy electronic warfare (EW) and reconnaissance equipment.
The sensors are extremely economical: the cost of producing one sensor is only 100–150 euros, and its power consumption does not exceed 1 W. They are proposed to be placed in a dense network along state borders or around strategic objects that require protection.
The nEdge PRO computing module collects information from surrounding microphones within a radius of up to 20 kilometers. It analyzes sound vibrations directly «on board» using optimized neural networks.
«Each drone has its own specific acoustic signature, which our artificial intelligence is able to identify in real time and use multiple sensors to determine its speed, altitude, and direction of movement,» explain the developers at Neuron Soundware.
If artificial intelligence recognizes the sound of an enemy UAV, the system instantly transmits the coordinates and flight path of the target to a central database, where air defense operators or mobile fire teams receive precise tracking of the object for its subsequent destruction.
Recall that Ukraine has developed a tactical acoustic detector that allows you to record the flight of enemy FPV drones, in particular on fiber optics, without using radar — only by characteristic noise. The ZVOOK NW0 tactical acoustic sensor is designed for round-the-clock monitoring of air threats at short distances.
