🐦Ornadyne's Bird-Shaped O1 Drone Passed As Wildlife During Air Force Test

Your next surveillance drone might look like a sparrow

Ornadyne's O1 drone registered as a bird on sensors during a military test, and that was the whole point. Sensors from other companies couldn't pick it up at all. If you work on surveillance, counter-drone, or edge sensing, this one matters. Most drones hide by masking signatures or hopping frequencies. The O1 hides by looking like a native bird, changing color, wingspan, proportions and silhouette to match a real species. Your radar and vision classifiers are trained to ignore birds, so that's the gap it slips through. The O1 weighs 1 pound, flies up to 10 kilometers (6 miles) for over an hour, and can carry a small camera for target recognition. It replaces propellers with flapping wings, which makes it quiet. The test ran during the military's annual Game of Drones event in September at Edwards Air Force Base, sponsored by the 412th Test Wing's Experimental Test Force and the DCMA Blue List team.