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

TL;DR

This paper introduces extsc{EventPro}, an event-camera-based system that accurately estimates drone propeller speeds and dynamics in real-time, significantly enhancing drone sensing and tracking capabilities in delivery scenarios.

Contribution

It presents a novel approach combining propeller rotation counting with event-camera sensing to improve drone detection and dynamic inference.

Findings

Achieves 3 ms sensing latency.

Estimates rotational speed with 0.23% error.

Increases drone tracking accuracy by over 22%.

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, \sysname. \sysname features two components: \textit{Count Every Rotation} achieves accurate, real-time propeller speed estimation by mitigating ultra-high sensitivity of event cameras to environmental noise. \textit{Every Rotation Counts} leverages these speeds to infer both internal and external drone dynamics. Extensive evaluations in real-world drone delivery scenarios show that \sysname achieves a sensing latency of 3$ms$ and a rotational speed estimation error of merely 0.23\%. Additionally, \sysname infers drone flight commands with 96.5\% precision and improves drone tracking accuracy by over 22\% when combined with other sensing modalities. \textit{ Demo: {\color{blue}https://eventpro25.github.io/EventPro/.} }