Project Description
Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) are becoming increasingly present on the modern battlefield. This growth in drone usage has become especially apparent in the war in Ukraine. The sophistication of these drones varies from coordinated swarms with integrated sensors and communication systems to hobby drones, explosives, and duct tape. Drones can be used for a multitude of purposes, from surveillance to explosive elimination. In the case of the latter, a three second warning could be the difference between the life and death of a soldier.
There is no current method for our armed forces to detect incoming drones. Special Operations Command has tasked us with creating a wearable device that could alert a soldier to the presence of an incoming UAV.
A detection device would have to be quick, reliable, and unobtrusive. Just like the detection of conventional ordnance, every millisecond counts. The sooner the user can receive the alert, the more time he or she has to react. False positives from the device would slow down operations and wear down the user’s trust in the readings, while false negatives could result in injury or death of the user. The device should not interfere with the intended force’s range of motion or add significant payload to their already significant fighting loads.
Our design solution has two drone detection methods, through WiFi sniffing and audio frequency spectrum analysis. These two methods combine to determine whether what they detect is actually the presence of an unidentified drone. This determination is then communicated to any other interconnected systems which send an analog output if there is a drone detected.
The Team
Will Covington is a senior from Buffalo, New York, and a member of the Fisher Hall community. He is involved with the boxing club on campus and plans to attend Northwestern University in the fall to begin his Master's in communication systems.
Dominic Keene is graduating from Notre Dame with a double major in Electrical Engineering and FTT (Film, Television, and Theatre). His concentrations within his majors are Semiconductors/Nanotechnology and Theatre respectively. Outside of class work, Dominic has been highly involved with the Not-So-Royal Shakespeare Company, a student run theatre group on campus, where he has acted in 9 different shows, many of which he also helped produce. In his nearly nonexistent free time, Dominic enjoys reading, playing video games, rock climbing, and spending time with his friends. After graduation Dominic will spend his summer attending the Prague Shakespeare Company’s summer Shakespeare intensive theatre school and acting in the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival’s production of As You Like It. In September he will move it Baltimore where he will pursue a job in process engineering at Northrop Grumman’s Advanced Technology Laboratory foundry while continuing to pursue his love for acting in his free time.
Josh Lehman is a senior electrical engineer and ROTC cadet at Notre Dame. After graduation, he will commission as a Cyber Warfare Officer in the Reserves and work at the Naval Surface Warfare Center - Crane Division in the Military Expeditionary Technologies department. Joshua is the founder and president of the Irish Essayons Engineering Club, dedicated to helping ROTC engineers balance their heavy workload as well as develop solutions to real world military engineering challenges. In his free time, Joshua acts and directs for the Not-So-Royal Shakespeare Company.
Danny Mullen is a senior from Cleveland, OH and a former Fisher Hall resident. He is involved with the Themed Entertainment Association at Notre Dame, leading a 2nd place team for the annual Ride Engineering Competition. After graduation he will work as an Electrical Designer at EXP in Glendale, CA, earning experience towards a PE license.