Count Every Rotation and Every Rotation Counts: Exploring Drone Dynamics via Propeller Sensing

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Abstract
As drone-based applications proliferate, paramount contactless sensing of airborne drones from the ground becomes indispensable. This work demonstrates concentrating on propeller rotational speed will substantially improve drone sensing performance and proposes an event-camera-based solution, EventPro. EventPro features two components: Count Every Rotation achieves accurate, real-time propeller speed estimation by mitigating ultra-high sensitivity of event cameras to environmental noise. Every Rotation Counts leverages these speeds to infer both internal and external drone dynamics. Extensive evaluations in real-world drone delivery scenarios show that EventPro achieves a sensing latency of 3 ms and a rotational speed estimation error of merely 0.23%. Additionally, EventPro infers drone flight commands with 96.5% precision and improves drone tracking accuracy by over 22% when combined with other sensing modalities. Demo: https://eventpro25.github.io/EventPro/.
Funding Information
  • Natural Science Foundation of China (62371269)
  • Shenzhen Low-Altitude Airspace Strategic Program Portfolio (Z25306110)
  • Meituan Academy of Robotics Shenzhen (N\/A)

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