Engineers at the University of Cincinnati are working on a system that uses sound to identify drone faults before takeoff. The project began in 2024 with support from NASA, which needs to detect motor problems before flight. The work was described by Prissha Chawla, a graduate student in the College of Engineering.
The researchers recorded how drones with damaged propellers - with nicks or cracks - and with faulty motors sound. They then converted these recordings into data that a computer at a ground station can use to warn the operator that the aircraft is not ready for flight.
In addition to cracks and chips on the blades, dirt and other debris getting into the motor bearings poses a danger. This can lead to jamming. As Chawla noted, the current focus is on pre-flight checks, which NASA already performs.
Student Luke Basse believes such a damage-detection system could become part of fully autonomous "drone in a box" complexes. In these, the unmanned aircraft is launched from a weather-protected container that itself performs takeoff, landing, charging, data loading and mission planning without an operator on site. According to Basse, in such a scenario sensors inside the container could conduct pre-flight checks.
In the future, the students envision an autonomous drone that uses sound alone to detect damage to its propellers and other mechanical systems in flight and returns to base before a catastrophic failure occurs.
The project was presented on October 25 at the Modeling, Estimation and Control Conference in Phoenix, Arizona. It is still a laboratory development, not a finished product.