Counter-UAS | Monitoring Lower Airspace
- Partner
Bundeswehr
- Environment
Perimeter · Germany
- LAbel
Field use, Ukraine — ongoing
- Year
Field use, Ukraine — ongoing
The Challenge
As drones become standard tools for logistics, inspection, research, and innovation, managing public airspace becomes a real operational problem. Registration systems record who has booked a flight, but they don't show what is actually in the air. A booked flight and an unauthorized one look the same on the schedule, and a drone that was never registered doesn't show up at all.
At the Berlin TXL site, the project is developing an approach to monitor and coordinate the lower airspace in real time.
Our Approach
Hydris brings the available sensors and the existing registration data into one live picture of the lower airspace.
Radar and optical sensors detect and track flying objects. Q-Seismic's acoustic sensors complement them, adding early detection and classification across varying light and weather, and a passive acoustic contact can cue the radar onto a target before it's in view. Hydris fuses every feed into a single operational picture, checks each track against the registration record, and raises the alarms the operator defines. The architecture is sensor-agnostic, so new detection technologies can be added as they mature.
The Result
Every drone in the lower airspace is tracked continuously. The operator can tell authorized, registered, and unauthorized flights apart, and no-fly-zone violations are detected and associated with the identified drone and its operator.
- Q-Box
Running Hydris v0.9 — sensor fusion and rule execution at the edge.
- Q-Seismic × 8
Ground vibration sensors covering the perimeter boundary.
"Combining the registration systems already in service with multi-sensor detection and data-driven analysis gives a reliable picture of all flight movements, for greater safety, transparency, and efficiency. It also lays the groundwork for unmanned traffic management as drone operations scale."
- Multi-sensor detection — radar, optical, and acoustic sensors fused into one air picture
- Registered vs unauthorized — every track checked against the existing booking record
- No-fly-zone alerts — breaches flagged and tied to the drone and its operator
