An easier and more efficient way of knocking out drones from the sky has been found by the scientists at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. The method is to target sound waves at the gyroscopes of drones. The gyroscope is used by all the unmanned aircrafts to track the craft’s orientation and move towards the side, thus allowing the aircraft to maneuver through the air. Thus, if this piece of equipment in a drone is deactivated, the drone becomes incapable of moving and therefore cannot stay in the air for much longer.
The technicality behind this discovery is that sound waves are capable of making things resonate. Thus, if the gyroscope of a drone is targeted with a certain frequency of sound, it resonates in accordance with the sound waves, which render it dysfunctional resulting in the deactivation of the unmanned aircraft.
Upon exposure to a specific frequency, the gyroscope attempts to overcompensate the impact of the sound waves by adjusting the rotor speeds, resulting in the drone getting knocked out of the sky. Although high quality drones may have gyroscopes designed to withstand high frequency sound waves, there may be other devices which can be knocked out using a certain frequency.
The practical applications of this technology may be limited because the sound waves need to be very intense in order to knock out a drone. The tests conducted to validate this discovery used sound waves generated from speakers attached to the drones, however if a drone needs to be knocked out from afar, it may be very challenging to carry out the task. Researchers have suggested that it may be possible to knock out drones from a distance if certain frequencies are used. This technology may be very helpful in implementing control over drone usage.