SonicNudge: Controlled Displacement of Hovering UAVs via Estimator-Controller Coupling

2026-08-25

AI Summary

本文提出SonicNudge方法，通过超声波共振干扰陀螺仪，利用估计器-控制器耦合机制使无人机产生可控位移，解决了传统依赖位置传感器欺骗的无人机位移攻击问题。

Abstract

UAV displacement attacks have traditionally relied on spoofing sensors that directly report position or translational motion, such as GNSS and optical flow. In this work, we introduce SonicNudge, a new attack primitive that instead targets the gyroscope and shows that low-level inertial errors can be transformed into controlled displacement of hovering or slow-moving UAVs. The attack exploits estimator--controller coupling: a small gyroscope perturbation by ultrasonic resonance can persist as an attitude-estimation bias, and the flight controller can convert this biased estimate into a shifted hover point. This behavior is especially relevant to UAV tasks that require hovering, station-keeping, slow approach, or precise final alignment, such as perimeter denial, inspection, docking, landing alignment, and close-proximity operation, where meter-scale position errors can be operationally meaningful. We analyze this attack primitive in a PX4-style flight stack and validate it through 81 simulation runs and more than 10 indoor/outdoor physical experiments, showing that displacement is governed by estimator weighting, bias observability, and closed-loop position correction. Our study suggests that UAV and vehicle-system security should look beyond direct navigation spoofing and pay closer attention to low-level inertial errors and estimator--controller coupling as a subtle but important attack surface.

Problem

• UAV displacement attacks
• gyroscope
• estimator-controller coupling
• inertial errors

Innovation

• SonicNudge
• estimator-controller coupling
• gyroscope perturbation
• ultrasonic resonance
• controlled displacement