Cybersecurity Research of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

This project, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), establishes a new Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Site at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. This project focuses on cybersecurity research for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). In each summer, undergraduate students participate in research to understand cybersecurity challenges for UAVs and how to design algorithms and techniques to protect UAVs from cyber-attacks. Research activities in this project explore the cybersecurity of UAVs from multiple angles, including secure communication, data privacy protection, secure control systems for autonomous UAVs, etc.

This past summer, three students (two from ERAU and one from UNLV) initiated this project at ADCL. They were able to perform successful flight tests with a quadcopter they had setup and commenced the design of a control system for cyber-attack detection in UAVs.