On the Use of the AIRA-UAS Corpus to Evaluate Audio Processing Algorithms in Unmanned Aerial Systems

Abstract

Audio analysis over an Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) is of interest it is an essential step for on-board sound source localization and separation. This could be useful for search & rescue operations, as well as for detection of unauthorized drone operations. In this paper, an analysis of the previously introduced Acoustic Interactions for Robot Audition (AIRA)-UAS corpus is presented, which is a set of recordings produced by the ego-noise of a drone performing different aerial maneuvers and by other drones flying nearby. It was found that the recordings have a very low Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR), that the noise is dynamic depending of the drone’s movements, and that their noise signatures are highly correlated. Three popular filtering techniques were evaluated in this work in terms of noise reduction and signature extraction, which are: Berouti’s Non-Linear Noise Subtraction, Adaptive Quantile Based Noise Estimation, and Improved Minima Controlled Recursive Averaging. Although there was moderate success in noise reduction, no filter was able to keep intact the signature of the drone flying in parallel. These results are evidence of the challenge in audio processing over drones, implying that this is a field prime for further research.