Bird or drone · One mast
A track is a shape in time: telling a bird from a drone on one mast
In a single frame a bird and a drone are the same dark dot. A tracker turns each dot into a path; one path in this film never flaps, flies straight, stops in the air and slides sideways without turning. Sound is the second cue.
Chapters
CONCEPT FILM
The scenes, vehicles and sensors, and the boxes, tracks and labels on screen, are Spikedge's own 3D animation, not detector or controller output. The film makes no measurement claims.
01What the film shows
At first light on the shore of a marsh there is one mast: a camera on a pan-tilt head, a microphone array and a small computer in a weatherproof box. A distant bird and a drone put the same handful of dark pixels on the sensor, and a still image does not carry what is needed to tell them apart. Time does.
A detector marks the dots, a tracker follows each one from frame to frame, and the path each dot leaves is a shape. A bird's shape beats, curves and bobs. Sound is a different kind of evidence: a wingbeat is a slow, broadband pulse that is never quite regular, and a rotor is a steady tone. Both cues are fused on the box on the mast, on a small power budget, which is why the metric that matters is frames per second per watt, and on the operator side, glass-to-glass delay.
This is a concept film. The marsh, the birds, the drone and the mast are our own 3D animation, and the boxes, tracks and labels on screen are animated illustration, not detector output. There are no figures in the film.
02Transcript
At first light, the birds lift off the water.
On the shore, a pan-tilt camera and a microphone face the same sky.
In a single frame, a bird and a drone are the same dark dot.
So a tracker follows each dot, and its path becomes a shape in time.
This one never flaps, it flies straight, and then it stops in the air.
A wingbeat is a slow pulse. A rotor is a steady tone.
Detection, tracking and fusion all run on the mast, so we measure frames per second per watt.
The operator sees the picture a moment later, and we measure that moment glass to glass.
The birds are still birds. Only one track is different.
