IIT Madras researchers develop drones to tackle 'Rogue Drones'

Indian Institute of Technology (IIM) Madras researchers have designed an Artificial Intelligence-operated drone that can tackle 'rogue drones'. According to a statement by the institute, the system can prove to be of priceless help to law administration agencies, security services, and armed forces to protect air space over serious civilian and military installations from surveillance by rogue drones. It can track down rogue drones visually, hack into their GPS navigation system. After this, the target drone is compelled to alter its flight path or land safely.

This system was developed by a team consisting of Vasu Gupta, a final year B. Tech student, Department of Aerospace Engineering, and Rishabh Vashistha, a Project Associate working in RAFT Lab, Department of Aerospace Engineering, IIT Madras. The Team was guided by Dr. Ranjith Mohan, Assistant Professor, Department of Aerospace Engineering, IIT Madras. 

A major benefit of this system is that it can be operated over the Internet and can traverse independently. This is in contrast to most prevailing drones that function on 'line of sight'. This means the operator must keep the drone in the range of their sight. Using the Internet to monitor the drones also lets the deployment of a swarm of drones that can judiciously identify and track drones, vehicles, people, and other objects.

According to Vasu Gupta, the drone functions by using software-defined radio and broadcasting tricked GPS signals by making use of the ephemeris data of GNSS constellations. The target drone's GPS sensor locks onto the forged radio station transferring at a much higher power than the existing satellite's transmission power. After this, the drone creates fake GPS packets by mathematically demonstrating the time differences at the receiver's end. Using four of such time alterations, the GPS sensor computes its 3D position and attunes the rogue drones' time to the deceived clock. This way, they change the longitude, altitude, latitude, and time of the rogue drones.

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