Dedrone has announced that its team of Echodyne Corporation, Squarehead Technologies, and Battelle, has been selected by SOFWERX for the ThunderDrone outdoor demonstration to take place at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada and AFWERX Enclave on June 18-20, 2018. Team Dedrone will demonstrate the capabilities of a layered detection, tracking, and classification solution that defends protected airspace against all drone threats.
The Dedrone platform is a fully automatic counterdrone solution, designed to detect, classify, and mitigate drone-based threats. Dedrone’s software, DroneTracker, gathers intelligence from Dedrone’s RF sensors RF-100 and RF-300, Echodyne’s MESA™ radar and Squarehead acoustic sensor. Once DroneTracker makes a positive identification of a drone, Battelle’s non-kinetic defense system, DroneDefender™, is automatically triggered to defeat the drone and eliminate the threat.
Team Dedrone is comprised of the following technology providers:
- Dedrone: The Dedrone platform is a fully automatic counterdrone solution, and uniquely designed to detect, classify, and mitigate drone-based threats. Dedrone’s drone detection platform utilizes multiple sensors, including RF, radar, video and acoustic, to detect drones, the flightpath and location of the pilot, and automatically deploy a passive security measure or defeat technology.
- Battelle DroneDefender™: DroneDefender is the first man-portable, accurate, and easy-to-use system to provide critical security protection. It uses radio control frequency disruption to safely stop drones in the air before they can pose a threat to military or civilian safety. It is an inexpensive, lightweight point-and-shoot system with a demonstrated range of 400 meters. When the DroneDefender takes aim at the drone, most drones revert to one of three pre-programmed protocols: Hover in place, slowly descend and land, or return to its flight origin point.
- Echodyne MESA Radar: Echodyne’s radar platform offers revolutionary sensor imaging technology made possible by its patented Metamaterial Electronically Scanning Array (MESA™). MESA radars operate the same as phased array radar systems, providing high-resolution ground-truth data at any time and in any weather. Unlike expensive and bulky phased arrays, however, Echodyne’s MESA can be produced in high volumes, at commercial price points, and with excellent size, weight, and power.
- Squarehead Technologies: The Discovair system is a fully automated passive, acoustic drone detection system for close proximity air marshalling. The system utilizes our acoustic array sensors, allowing for both detection and tracking of drones. The system detects audio anomalies within field of view and runs a discrimination algorithm on the anomaly. Discrimination is immediate, and tracking is provided in real time.
SOFWERX is leading collaboration between SOF Warfighters, Interagency Partners, and select contributors from Industry and Academia on technology and innovation efforts to bring drones (sea, land, and air), tactical swarms, payloads (kinetic/non-kinetic/sensors), and their associated data science applications to the Special Operations Community. The ThunderDrone project is a series of Rapid Prototyping Events (RPE) that focus on different aspects of current drone technology. Team Dedrone will participate in the final ThunderDrone event, ThunderDrone RPE III. During this event, select companies will compete for cash awards up to $600,000 in the area of C-UAS capabilities.
