IIT Madars Researchers Develop AI-Based Drone to Counter Rogue Device

An Artificial Intelligence-powered drone has been developed by IIT Madras researchers. The device will be used to counter rogue drones. The system is developed by Vasu Gupta, B.Tech (Aerospace Engineeringfinal) year student, Rishabh Vashistha, a project associate in RAFT Lab, Department of Aerospace Engineering, IIT Madras. Dr. Ranjith Mohan, Assistant Professor, Department of Aerospace Engineering, IIT Madras mentored the team throughout the design of the device.

According to the statement released by the institute, AI drone is an invaluable system that can be used in the law enforcement agencies, security services and armed forces for the security of air space over critical civilian and military installations for the rogue drones surveillance. Moreover, the AI-based drone can track the rogue drones visually, it can hack the GPS navigation system of the suspected drone after which the drone device can be forced to change the path or land safely.

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While addressing people, Dr. Mohan said that the model of the device is equipped to detect and track the objects visually and it can accurately fly and land over the Internet. The device will be tested in the next step to ensure the reliability of the device to be used for a wide range of demanding visions of law enforcement and defence agencies. The device also opens up the possibility of swarming multiple vehicles due to its programmable nature.

Advantages of newly designed Drone Device

• It can be controlled over the Internet
• It can navigate autonomously as compared to other existing drone devices that can only operate on 'line of sight’ i.e. the drone must be kept in sight by the operator.
• As it is used over the Internet, it can allow for deploying a swarm that can detect track drones, vehicles, people other objects intelligently.

Vasu Gupta talked about the device and said that the device works by using software-defined radio and broadcasting spoofed GPS signals using the ephemeris data of GNSS constellations. The GPS sensor of the rogue device detected by the system gets locked in the fake radio station that transmits power much higher than the satellite transmission power.

As a result, the drone generates fake GPS packets by mathematically modelling the time differences at the receiver. The four-time differences can be used by the GPS sensor to calculate the 3D position of the rogue device and calibrate the rogue drones' time to the spoofed clock. This is how the latitude, longitude, altitude and time of the rogue drones can be altered.

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Rishabh Vashistha further added about the working of drones. He said that the target's drone can be allowed to move locally by Algorithmically altering the 3D position. Moreover, if the variation is large in the spoofed GPS position, a failsafe is invoked in the target system that will allow the target drone to land safely.