Sky-Ear: An Unmanned Aerial Vehicle-Enabled Victim Sound Detection and Localization System

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Hong, Yi, Wang, Mingyang, Liu, Yalin, Fu, Yaru, Hung, Kevin
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
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author Hong, Yi
Wang, Mingyang
Liu, Yalin
Fu, Yaru
Hung, Kevin
author_facet Hong, Yi
Wang, Mingyang
Liu, Yalin
Fu, Yaru
Hung, Kevin
contents Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly deployed in search-and-rescue (SAR) missions, yet continuous and reliable victim detection and localization remain challenging due to on-board hardware constraints. This paper designs an UAV-Enabled Victim Sound Detection and Localization System (called ``Sky-Ear'' for brevity) to achieve energy-efficient acoustic sensing and sound detection for SAR. Based on a circular-shaped microphone array, two-stage (Sentinel and Responder) audio processing is developed for energy-consuming and highly reliable sound detection. A Masking autoencoder (MAE)-based sound detection method is designed in the Sentinel stage to analyze frequency-time acoustic features. For improved precision, a continuous localization method is designed by optimizing detected directions from multiple observations. Extensive simulation experiments are conducted to validate the system's performance in terms of victim detection accuracy and localization error.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_12455
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Sky-Ear: An Unmanned Aerial Vehicle-Enabled Victim Sound Detection and Localization System
Hong, Yi
Wang, Mingyang
Liu, Yalin
Fu, Yaru
Hung, Kevin
Audio and Speech Processing
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly deployed in search-and-rescue (SAR) missions, yet continuous and reliable victim detection and localization remain challenging due to on-board hardware constraints. This paper designs an UAV-Enabled Victim Sound Detection and Localization System (called ``Sky-Ear'' for brevity) to achieve energy-efficient acoustic sensing and sound detection for SAR. Based on a circular-shaped microphone array, two-stage (Sentinel and Responder) audio processing is developed for energy-consuming and highly reliable sound detection. A Masking autoencoder (MAE)-based sound detection method is designed in the Sentinel stage to analyze frequency-time acoustic features. For improved precision, a continuous localization method is designed by optimizing detected directions from multiple observations. Extensive simulation experiments are conducted to validate the system's performance in terms of victim detection accuracy and localization error.
title Sky-Ear: An Unmanned Aerial Vehicle-Enabled Victim Sound Detection and Localization System
topic Audio and Speech Processing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.12455