The same mechanism, four different worlds.
Everything we build starts from one idea: a machine's sound has a direction, and that direction can be engineered — passively, in the shape itself. What changes from sector to sector isn't the mechanism but what the direction of sound decides — in one world, whether a system is tracked; in another, whether it's welcome. Below is the same approach in the four places it matters most.
In the field, being heard is being found.
Acoustic sensing has become a practical, low-cost layer in counter-UAS detection and tracking. Distributed microphone arrays are passive, emit nothing an RF sensor can flag, are difficult to spoof, and cost a fraction of radar to field — which is exactly why they're proliferating. For small uncrewed systems, acoustic signature is now a survivability variable on par with visual and RF signature.
On the battlefield, this problem isn't theoretical — it's real enough that defense organizations, including elements of U.S. Special Operations Command and the U.S. Army, have issued open calls for solutions to the acoustic detectability of small uncrewed systems.
Acoustic Rainbow Emitters are passive structures whose geometry is designed to redirect a platform's acoustic energy along intended directions, steering the sound that would otherwise reach the ground away from the sensors and observers beneath it. Rather than absorbing or cancelling that energy, the geometry redistributes it — which means the goal is to reduce how detectable a platform is to ground-based acoustic sensing by changing where its sound travels rather than how much of it there is.
GHOST-ARC™ is our flagship program applying AREs to small-UAS acoustic survivability. It is in active development, and it's the vehicle through which we intend to measure and mature the approach against operationally relevant conditions. We've submitted a Phase I SBIR proposal to U.S. Special Operations Command. We describe the program in terms of what it's designed to do and what we intend to measure — not results we haven't produced.
In contested and denied environments, every active subsystem is a liability: a power draw, a failure point, an emission signature of its own, and something an adversary can degrade. An ARE's behavior is built into its shape, leaving nothing to power, boot, jam, or update — and it's designed to be power-independent, retrofit-compatible, and SWaP-C-conscious, which is what integration onto real platforms demands.
Engage. If acoustic survivability is on your program's roadmap — as a program lead, a prime, or an integrator — there's a serious way to start.
Start a conversation →Autonomy won't scale past the people beneath it.
Route density, operating hours, and network expansion are increasingly gated by community noise, not by flight performance. Across UAS integration research and public-acceptance literature, acoustic annoyance recurs as a leading constraint on scaling — and regulators and standards bodies are actively developing noise-assessment frameworks for uncrewed aircraft. Acoustic performance is becoming a formal evaluation criterion, not just a community-relations problem.
AREs are designed to shape where a vehicle's sound goes — redirecting ground-directed acoustic energy away from the communities under a route. This isn't a promise of quieter propulsion — the energy budget stays whatever the platform makes — but the geometry is intended to change what the people beneath the route actually perceive by changing the direction that energy travels. As noise-assessment frameworks formalize, the approach is designed to support regulatory alignment — evaluated against the criteria those frameworks define, not around them.
Delivery and autonomy platforms live on constrained energy budgets and hard certification math. An ARE draws no power from flight-critical systems, adds no active electronics or software to qualify, and has no duty cycle to manage. It's designed to be retrofit-compatible — applicable to fleets that already exist, not just next-generation airframes — and to behave identically on the first flight and the ten-thousandth.
Engage. If community noise is on your scaling roadmap — as an operator, an OEM, or an integrator — we should talk before your next network expansion decision, not after.
Start a conversation →Cities are getting louder from the air down.
Public systems are adopting drones, robots, and automated services faster than acoustic governance can keep up. Urban noise is regulated through ordinances and managed largely by complaint — after deployment, one incident at a time. For agencies and city programs, that's a procurement problem: the acoustic footprint of a new system is discovered by residents rather than decided by planners, and every complaint cycle costs trust that public technology programs can't easily buy back.
AREs are designed to make acoustic footprint a design decision instead of a complaint outcome. Because the geometry is intended to shape where a system's sound goes, directionality can be planned before deployment — oriented away from residences, toward corridors where it matters less — rather than mitigated after residents object. It becomes acoustic management by design rather than by apology.
Public procurement punishes recurring burden, and an ARE carries none: no power requirement, no software license, no calibration schedule, and no maintenance contract. It's designed to behave the same on day one and day one thousand, at line-item cost rather than program cost — and for systems that must serve the public for years between budget cycles, what isn't there is exactly the point.
Engage. If your agency or program is weighing the acoustic footprint of automated systems, we can help you think about it at the planning stage — where it's cheapest to get right.
Start a conversation →Machines that share space with people need to be good neighbors.
In automated facilities — mobile robots, robotic cells, conveyance, process machinery — the acoustic environment is an operating constraint, not a comfort feature. Worker noise exposure is regulated, hearing conservation carries real cost, and noise shapes decisions that have nothing to do with sound: where automation can be placed, how zones are laid out, which shifts run what. Conventional treatment fights the problem volumetrically — enclosures, barriers, absorption — and pays for it in floor space, heat, access, and maintenance.
AREs are intended to shape the sound environment of automated facilities directionally: geometry designed to redirect a machine's acoustic energy away from work zones and toward paths where it matters less. Applied per machine or per cell, the approach is designed to treat noise where it's made rather than where it's suffered — and because it's retrofit-compatible by design, it's intended for the equipment a facility already runs, not just the next capital cycle.
Uptime is the religion of industrial operations, and an ARE asks nothing of it — nothing is added that can fail, drift, or wait on a technician, and there's no power, calibration, patch cycle, or consumables to manage. It's designed to add to a machine what a well-made part adds, which is almost nothing, and to keep doing its job through every shift the machine runs.
Engage. If noise is shaping your facility layout, your shift design, or your automation roadmap, there's a conversation worth having.
Start a conversation →