| --- |
| license: cc-by-4.0 |
| task_categories: |
| - audio-classification |
| - object-detection |
| tags: |
| - drone-detection |
| - counter-uas |
| - acoustic-array |
| - cue-to-track |
| - autonomous-drill |
| pretty_name: "nightjar 2026-08-11 — first autonomous hover drill: the loop closes in 18 s" |
| --- |
| |
| # nightjar 2026-08-11 — the first autonomous cue drill (hover station) |
|
|
| A drone hovered at a fixed station above the WP beacon (~daylight, post-rain) while the rig ran |
| the SELF-JUDGING look-away drill: point away → re-arm → the acoustic chain must re-find the |
| drone → YOLO-vouched lock, scored against a self-bootstrapped truth pose. No operator in the |
| loop: truth was acquired by ear (cue chain → slew → YOLO lock), the station gate froze at the |
| WP bearing, and every trial was scored automatically. |
|
|
| ## ★ Headline: the clean run closes the loop in 18–22 s at 0.2° |
|
|
| The final drill run (`drill_20260811_151955`, the only one with a SINGLE drill process — see |
| the incident below) is the honest measurement: |
|
|
| | trial | total time (incl. look-away + slew) | lock error | zoom at end | |
| |---|---|---|---| |
| | T1 | 22.2 s | **0.24°** | 29.0 mm | |
| | T2 | 18.2 s | **0.15°** | 25.5 mm | |
|
|
| Chain legs in the clean run: **cue ≈ 0 s** (drone continuously audible; a cue is always |
| pending at re-arm), **detection ≈ 0 s** (the slew lands with the drone already in frame), |
| **vouch ≈ 0 s**, then settle + zoom climb. Success bar was 5 consecutive locks <15 s / <2° / |
| ≥30 mm — not reached only because the session ended after two trials; both trials beat the |
| error bar by 10×, and zoom was still climbing when the run was stopped. |
|
|
| ## The acoustic side, 12 min of hover |
|
|
| ``` |
| 172 cue candidates (14.4/min), az 139.6–144.8 (median 142.5, spread ±2.6°) |
| presence median 19.9 dB, max 25.0 · chirp_rejects 10 (guard off, no pinger) |
| ``` |
|
|
| **Cue bias +5.8° — consistent, and NOT an error.** The offset is anchored on the FAR beacon |
| (JBL, parallax→0, matches drone-at-range geometry); the drone hovered above the NEAR WP |
| beacon, so array↔camera parallax (~3 m baseline) shows up as a stable ~+5.8°. Containment |
| absorbed it: the slew still put the drone in frame every time (det ≈ 0 s). At operational |
| range this bias vanishes by construction. |
|
|
| ## ⚠ THE INCIDENT: three concurrent drill processes (runs 151000 / 151031 / 151200) |
|
|
| Retried ssh launches all fired, stacking **three drills onto one mount**. They fought over |
| arm/disarm and pointing: interleaved trials, contradictory results for the same trial number, |
| "truth" yanked +14.4° while the drone hovered motionless, lock errors of 8–9.6°, vouch times |
| of 22–48 s. **Do not use those three runs for latency or accuracy conclusions** — every slow |
| number there is mount contention, not the tracker. (The clean run's vouch ≈ 0 s refutes the |
| "confirmation-confidence is the choke" hypothesis those runs suggested; a `yolo_confirm_conf` |
| change made on that basis was reverted the same day.) |
|
|
| Fixes shipped immediately: `cue_drill.py` now takes an exclusive flock (a second instance |
| refuses to start), and `drill_start.sh` / `drill_stop.sh` on-rig launchers keep dangerous |
| patterns off the ssh command line (a raw pkill in an ssh line self-matched and killed its own |
| session twice today). Double-start refusal verified live. |
|
|
| ## Contents |
|
|
| ``` |
| audio/uma16_*.wav UMA-16, 16 ch, 48 kHz, 5-min splits (12 min hover) |
| audio/cue_log.jsonl 172 candidates with az/presence/line_hz |
| video_segments.tar 1080p native + substream, 60 s MPEG-TS |
| blackbox/state.jsonl tracker FSM ~3 Hz |
| blackbox/frames.tar 8,753 substream stills |
| drill_20260811_151000/ trials.csv + events.jsonl ⚠ 3-process contention |
| drill_20260811_151031/ trials.csv + events.jsonl ⚠ 3-process contention |
| drill_20260811_151200/ trials.csv + events.jsonl ⚠ 3-process contention |
| drill_20260811_151955/ trials.csv + events.jsonl ✅ CLEAN single instance |
| ``` |
|
|
| Registration in force: UMA `az_offset 323.30 / invert true` (far-beacon anchored, verified by |
| pointing to 0.02° the previous evening). DJI FlightRecord not yet attached — add under `dji/` |
| when exported. UMA-16 ch9 (0-based) is dead; exclude it. |
|
|
