Visual and hearing detection capabilities to discriminate whether a UAV invade a campus airspace

Signal Detection Theory (SDT) has been widely applied in target detection. In this study, we applied the SDT to examine human visual and hearing detection capabilities to determine whether an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) had invaded an airspace. The UAV was remote controlled and hovered at air locations at altitudes ranged from 20 m to 80 m. The horizontal distances between the UAV and the subjects were from 101.3 m to 194.3 m. The participants watched and responded whether the UAV had invaded or not at a five-point scale: 1 definitely yes, 2 probably yes, 3 don't know, 4 probably no, and 5 definitely no. The receiver operating characteristic curves (ROC curve) under different air location conditions were plotted. The P(A), or the sensitivity to visually detect the target ranged from 0.77 to 0.86. Detection capabilities of invaded UAV using both visual and auditory perceptions were discussed.