Civilian Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Research Articles

Оценка влияния непреднамеренных помех на линию вверх канала управления беспилотного летательного аппарата

Modern unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are becoming increasingly important in solving many problems, for example, when delivering goods, video recording, conducting aerial monito¬ring of the condition of remote and hard-to-reach objects, etc. When solving these problems, UAVs may experience unintentional interference from other radio-electronic equipment (RES). Currently, virtually no attention is paid to issues related to the analysis of the quality of operation of civilian UAVs in the presence of unintentional interference from other civil electronic distribution systems. The proposed method is intended to somewhat fill this gap. It is based on the assumption that a decrease in the quality of reception of useful signals in the radio control channel below a certain value due to the low signal-to-noise ratio at the input of the UAV receiver in its bandwidth will lead to errors in the UAV flight control commands and the wrong starting of on-board specialized equipment. The level of the interfering signal delivered to the UAV receiver from a stationary land-based transmitter depends on interaction areas between transmitter and receiver antenna patterns. A method for determining these areas, consisting of main and side lobes of antenna patterns, is proposed. This method can be used to solve the more general problem of analyzing the electromagnetic compatibility of UAV radio stations, control panels and ground-based electronic devices, as it is an integral part of solving this problem.

An adaptive robust service composition and optimal selection method for cloud manufacturing based on the enhanced multi-objective artificial hummingbird algorithm

The smooth execution of tasks in the cloud manufacturing (CMfg) process can be significantly affected by various real-world uncertainties, resulting in inefficiencies or even failures of the composite manufacturing service (CMS). Nevertheless, current research primarily concentrates on post-exception emergency handling methods, heavily dependent on the planned CMS and real-time status of manufacturing resources, often leading to suboptimal temporary adjustments or even the inability to find a viable solution. Hence, there is an urgent necessity to enhance the robustness of the planned CMS during the service composition and optimal selection (SCOS) phase. In pursuit of this goal, the paper initially presents an adaptive robust service composition and optimization selection (ARSCOS) model. This model dynamically determines whether to await exception resolution or invoke an alternative service, considering the circumstances when a service exception arises and employing task delay time to characterize the robustness of a specific CMS. Subsequently, an enhanced multi-objective artificial hummingbird algorithm (EMOAHA) is devised for this model. Finally, the efficacy of EMOAHA is demonstrated by applying it to nine different scales of civilian unmanned aerial vehicle manufacturing SCOS problems and 17 benchmark functions. The results illustrate that the proposed EMOAHA exhibits superior convergence and diversity in comparison to the other 11 classical intelligent optimization algorithms.

Radio frequency based distributed system for noncooperative UAV classification and positioning

With the increasing popularity of civilian unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), safety issues arising from unsafe operations and terrorist activities have received growing attention. To address this problem, an accurate classification and positioning system is needed. Considering that UAVs usually use radio frequency (RF) signals for video transmission, in this paper, we design a passive distributed monitoring system that can classify and locate UAVs according to their RF signals. Specifically, three passive receivers are arranged in different locations to receive RF signals. Due to the noncooperation between a UAV and receivers, it is necessary to detect whether there is a UAV signal from the received signals. Hence, convolutional neural network (CNN) is proposed to not only detect the presence of the UAV, but also classify its type. After the UAV signal is detected, the time difference of arrival (TDOA) of the UAV signal arriving at the receiver is estimated by the cross-correlation method to obtain the corresponding distance difference. Finally, the Chan algorithm is used to calculate the location of the UAV. We deploy a distributed system constructed by three software defined radio (SDR) receivers on the campus playground, and conduct extensive experiments in a real wireless environment. The experimental results have successfully validated the proposed system.

ПОДХОДЫ К ПРОЕКТИРОВАНИЮ И ПРАКТИКА ПРИМЕНЕНИЯ БЕСПИЛОТНЫХ ВОЗДУШНЫХ СУДОВ САМОЛЁТНОГО ТИПА

Nowadays unmanned aviation has found wide application in many fields of human activity. Over the last two decades, such technology has moved from the category of military or experimental exotics to something applied and ubiquitous. Occupying more and more new spheres, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) get all the new functions. For their implementation the designers often take quite bold decisions, which are rare in the «big» manned aviation. The article examines the current state of the civilian airplane-type UAVs industry in terms of their design features, as well as the specifics of their application in various sectors of the economy. The authors analyse the principles underlying the choice of this or that aerodynamic scheme of a UAVs on the process of its design. In the context of possible UAVs application scenarios the advantages and disadvantages as well as limitations of a particular UAVs airframe layout, applied engine unit and construction materials are under consideration. Based on a summary of the parameters analysed, it stands out a number of classification features, which can be used as a basis for a comprehensive classification of a wide range of unmanned civil aviation.

Research on an Urban Low-Altitude Target Detection Method Based on Image Classification

With the expansion of the civil UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) market, UAVs are also increasingly being used in illegal activities such as espionage and snooping on privacy. Therefore, how to effectively control the activities of UAVs in cities has become an urgent problem to be solved. Considering the urban background and the radar performance of communication signals, a low-altitude target detection scheme based on 5G base stations is proposed in this paper. A 5G signal is used as the external radiation source, the method of transceiver separation is adopted, and the forward-scattered waves are used to complete the detection of UAV. This paper mainly analyzes the principle of forward scattering detection in an urban environment, where the forward-scattered wave of a target is stronger than the backward-reflected wave and contains both height difference and midline height information on the target. Based on the above theory, this paper proposes a forward-scattered wave recognition algorithm based on YOLOv3-FCWImageNet, which transforms the forward-scattered wave recognition problem into a target detection problem and accomplishes the recognition of forward-scattered waves by using the excellent performance of algorithms in the field of image recognition. Simulation results show that FCWImageNet can distinguish two different low-altitude targets effectively, and realize the monitoring and classification of UAVs.

Responsible governance of civilian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) innovations for Indian crop insurance applications

Civilian Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is an emerging technology in Indian crop insurance applications. The technology is new to an agro-based country like India with diverse socio-cultural norms and values. However, in such a diverse democracy, UAV governance and deployment pose a significant challenge and risk. In other words, charting out a proper framework for a risk-free implementation of this governance has emerged as a leading research topic in the concerned discipline. In innovations literature, Responsible Innovation (RI) takes care of emerging technology governance; thus, RI becomes significant as a theoretical framework. The study is intended to find out how the framework of RI enables responsible governance and also who are the main actors and stakeholders of governance and deployment of civilian UAVs in crop insurance applications in India? An in-depth interview method and snowball sampling technique have been employed to identify interviewees from Delhi, Gujarat, and Rajasthan. Findings suggest that civilian UAV is effective in handling risk, crop damage assessment, and claim settlement. The RI approach, through its dimensions and steps, enables equal participation and deliberation among all the actors and stakeholders of UAV governance that consists of government bodies, research organizations, insurance agencies, local administration, and farmers. Effective regulations, adhering to accountability, and responsibility promote responsible governance.

CT-Net: An Efficient Network for Low-Altitude Object Detection Based on Convolution and Transformer

With the growing popularity of civilian unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), unauthorized flights are on the rise accordingly. Therefore, it is critical to detect low-altitude UAVs for protecting personal privacy and public safety. Though substantial progress has been made in UAV detection, the existing detection methods still have problems in balancing the detection accuracy, the model size, and the detection speed. To address these limitations, this article proposes a novel deep learning method named convolution–transformer network (CT-Net). First, the attention-enhanced transformer block (AETB), which builds a feature-enhanced multihead self-attention (FEMSA), is introduced into the backbone of the network to improve the feature extraction ability of the model. Then, a lightweight bottleneck module (LBM) is utilized to control the computation load and reduce the parameters. Finally, we present a directional feature fusion structure (DFFS) to improve the accuracy of detection when processing multiscale objects, especially small-size objects. The proposed scheme achieves 0.966 mAP with the input size of 640 <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\times640$ </tex-math></inline-formula> pixels on our low-altitude small-object dataset, and the performance is superior to YOLOv5. Furthermore, the experimental result on MS COCO shows that the CT-Net can outperform the current state-of-the-art detectors by a large margin. Thus, it is feasible to apply CT-Net to low-altitude small-object detection according to the experimental results.

ОСОБЛИВОСТІ ОЦІНЮВАННЯ ЕФЕКТИВНОСТІ ВИЯВЛЕННЯ НАЗЕМНИХ ОБ’ЄКТІВ БЕЗПІЛОТНИМ ЛІТАЛЬНИМ АПАРАТОМ ЦИВІЛЬНОГО ПРИЗНАЧЕННЯ

The task of constructing partial criteria for the effectiveness of an unmanned aerial vehicle for civilian purposes when performing the tasks of single or group search for unmasked stationary objects by the method of random search with a constantintensity of observation is set and solved. The relevance of the research is related to the analysis of the most appropriate search methods, which ensure the detection of the object in the shortest time and with the least consumption of resources. The purpose of the article is to construct partial criteria for the effectiveness of civil unmanned aerial vehicles when performing the taskof searching for and detecting stationary unmasked objects. These criteria should not only allow to evaluate the effectiveness of the task by an unmanned aerial vehicle, but also to plan the task of searching for a single or group object with a given level ofprobability, to estimate the time spent, the area viewed by the observer during the given time, etc. The range of civil tasks for which unmanned aerial vehicles can be used has been analyzed. The main requirements for the efficiency criteria of unmanned aircraft complexes have been studied and formulated. An analysis of publications was conducted and the shortcomings of existing approaches to the formation of criteria for the effectiveness of unmanned aerial vehicles were revealed. Taking into account that the search for objects is a process without an aftereffect along a random trajectory, a probabilistic model of constructing partial of efficiency criteria is proposed. It will make it possible to estimate the probability of detecting a single object in a given period of time, as well as the average time required for the search until the object is detected, taking into account the technical characteristics of the unmanned aerial vehicle and the optical system, as well as limitations on the time of finding an unmanned aerial vehicle in working area and the distance to the far boundary of the working area. A probabilistic modelwas proposed and an algorithm was built for finding a partial criterion for detecting the frequency of stationary and unmasked objects from the total number during a group search, under the condition of different object detection probabilities. The scientific novelty of the research is related to the development of a method that allows not only to evaluate the effectiveness of a task performed by an unmanned aerial vehicle, but also to plan the task of searching for a single or group object with a given level of probability.

Contract and Lyapunov Optimization-Based Load Scheduling and Energy Management for UAV Charging Stations

Nowadays, a large number of civilian unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly being used in many of our daily applications. However, there are many kinds of UAVs that need to enhance their endurance due to their limited resources. In order to make the UAVs operate efficiently, it is necessary to schedule UAVs with charging requirements. In this paper, renewable energy production and storage equipment on the basis of traditional charging stations is adopted to reduce the power purchase from the distribution network as much as possible. An online algorithm based on Lyapunov optimization is proposed to schedule the charging of UAVs and the energy management of the charging station. Meanwhile, contract theory is used to design the optimal charging strategy in the case of information asymmetry. Hence, local renewable energy can be utilized to the greatest extent, and electricity purchase costs can be reduced. Through the incentive system, users can spontaneously charge at low peak times and avoid the risk of grid overload and high energy cost. The simulation results show that the algorithm can improve the efficiency of charging station operators, allowing users to avoid charging at peak times, and only use real-time information to schedule UAVs. Compared to other algorithms, the proposed scheme can bring good revenue to operators while ensuring long-lasting operations of charging stations.

Simulation of airborne collision between a drone and an aircraft nose

The usage of a large number of civil unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has caused potential hazards to the safe operation of manned aircraft. In this paper, a full-size commercial aircraft nose and a typical UAV with the whole level were selected for collision test, by which the verified finite element (FE) models were applied to four representative regions of the nose for collision simulation. A 1,360 g UAV and a 1,800 g bird have collided with the nose respectively under the same conditions and the former caused more serious damage. The kinetic energy of UAV as well as the hardness of its major components plays a critical role in evaluating damage of the nose, and the greater the kinetic energy loss, the more serious the damage of the nose is in general. It was very possible that the battery of UAV would penetrate the skin to enter the inside of nose with high speed and cause explosion and fire. The flying posture of UAV has an effect on the nose damage and no penetration happened to the lower panel of the main windshield under various possible impact postures of UAV with a velocity of 152 m/s. The existing anti-bird strike airworthiness clauses concerning the aircraft nose as CCAR 25.571 are not suitable for the design of nose against UAV strike and are suggested to be improved with extensive research findings in the future, including the operational requirements of UAVs and the design guidelines for a UAV collision mitigation.

The role of unmanned aerial vehicles in military communications: application scenarios, current trends, and beyond

The role of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is becoming increasingly important for military conflicts. UAVs are more and more strongly considered as a force multiplier that could play a decisive role for the final outcome of an ambiguous battle. While the role of UAVs for Identification/Surveillance/Reconnaissance missions has been well established within many modern armies, their contribution to the upgrade or the restoration of military communications is still vague. In the current paper we review the current situation in military communications utilizing UAV platforms, and we also explore its future trends and capabilities taking into consideration the parallel developments in the civil UAV manufacturing sector involving UAV swarms and fifth-generation networks. Furthermore, a set of realistic combat scenarios involving the utilization of UAVs as a multipurpose communication node is presented and discussed, highlighting its critical role as a catalyst for the successful accomplishment of diverse military missions.

Solving “Limited” Task Allocation Problem for UAVs Based on Optimization Algorithms

With the rapid development of science and technology, unmanned technology has been widely used in many fields. One of the most important applications is in the field of civil and military UAVs. In the field of military UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), UAVs usually have to complete a series of tasks. In this series of tasks, there are often some key tasks. Key tasks play an important role, which is highly related to the feasibility of the whole action or task; mission failure sometimes causes incalculable damage. When assigning tasks to UAVs, it is necessary to ensure the accurate implementation of key tasks, so as to ensure the orderly implementation of the overall task. This paper not only successfully solved the previous problems but also comprehensively considered the minimization of resource consumption and the maximization of task revenue in the process of UAV task allocation. On the basis of considering the key system, considering the constraints and multiobjective problems in the UAV task allocation process, the violence allocation algorithm, constraint optimization evolutionary algorithm, PSO algorithm, and greedy algorithm combined with a constraint evolutionary algorithm are improved and optimized; it has been proven that they can solve the above difficulties. At the same time, several comparison experiments have been carried out; the performance and conclusion of the above four algorithms in the “limited” UAV task allocation scheme are analyzed in the experimental part.

Responsibly regulating the civilian unmanned aerial vehicle deployment in India and Japan

PurposeThe purpose of the paper is to describe the evolving regulatory structures of the civilian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in India and Japan, not yet fully developed to regulate the deployment of the UAV. India and Japan are at the forefront to overhaul the respective regulatory framework to address issues of accountability, responsibility and risks associated with the deployment of UAV technologies.Design/methodology/approachIn-depth interviews are conducted both in Japan and India to gather primary data based on the snowball sampling method. The paper addresses questions such as what is the current scenario of civilian UAV deployment in India and Japan. What are the regulation structures for Civil UAV deployment and operation and how they differ in India and Japan? What are the key regulatory challenges for Civil UAV deployment in India? How regulation structure enables or inhibits the users and operators of Civil UAVs in India? What are mutual learnings concerning UAV regulations?FindingsFindings reveal that the Indian regulations address issues of responsibility by imparting values of privacy, safety, autonomy and security; Japanese regulation prefers values of trust, responsibility, safety and ownership with more freedom to experiment.Originality/valueThe study on civilian UAV regulatory framework is a new and innovative work embedded by the dimensions of responsibility and accountability from a responsible innovation perspective. The work is a new contribution to innovation literature looked at from regulatory structures. Field visits to both Japan and India enrich the study to a new elevation.

Dual-Source Detection and Identification System Based on UAV Radio Frequency Signal

With the rapid development of the technology industry, low, slow, and small civilian Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) have been popularized, bringing fun and convenience to life and work. However, with the popularization of UAV, all kinds of illegal flying behaviors have appeared successively, posing a threat to people’s life and national security. To solve this problem, this article proposes a method and designs a system to detect and identify the UAV through the radio frequency (RF) signal emitted by the UAV itself. First, the RF front-end scans and intercepts the radio signals in the target airspace, then analyzes and identifies them by algorithms, and then implements the algorithm by field-programmable gate array (FPGA). Among them, algorithm recognition includes UAV flight control signal (FCS) detection and recognition, UAV image transmission signal (ITS) blind detection, and accurate recognition. Through the algorithm recognition result, it can be judged whether there are UAVs in the protected area. Finally, the hierarchical experimental verification method is used to demonstrate that the system can identify the number, type, and frequency band of UAVs in urban complex electromagnetic environment by using dual source detection and recognition algorithm, which provides a good foundation for UAV management and control.

Investigation of electromagnetic radiation of the control channel of a small-sized unmanned aerial vehicle for attenuation

An urgent problem of our time is to counteract the illegal use of civilian unmanned aerial vehicles (quadrocopter type). The problem of detecting quadrocopters is related to their low visibility, including in the electromagnetic wavelength range. As a result, it is relevant and appropriate to develop a budget device for countering such aircraft. At the initial stage to achieve this goal, we studied the General principles of control of the civil quadcopter “Xiaomi Mi Drone 4k”, determined its most significant unmasking feature (electromagnetic radiation of the control channel), measured the electrical component of the electromagnetic field from its control panel in order to further calculate the signal attenuation coefficient for detecting the operator of an unmanned aerial vehicle.

Cybersecurity in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)

ABSTRACT For the investigation, the security factor is crucial as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) become prevalent, and their operational range grows exponentially. This research is a comprehensive literature review investigating which cyber-attacks are most frequent and what consequences they cause in civilian UAV attacks. The cyber threats described in this study are categorized using the STRIDE attack paradigm, the challenge they pose, and the appropriate equipment for the attack. The most common forms of UAV cyberattack and the most effective result are spoofing and denial of service attacks. No difficult-to-reach device is needed for any attack style, meaning that the security state currently requires enhancements to civilian use of UAVs in most cases.

Radar cross section analysis of unmanned aerial vehicles using predics

In this study, a quantitative radar cross section (RCS) analysis of different unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) models were accomplished by means of a series of RCS simulations. The simulations were carried out by high-frequency RCS simulation and analysis tool called PREDICS. To quantify the RCS features of the UAV model, both the anglevariation and frequency-variation simulations for all polarization excitations were performed. The results of the simulations suggested that RCS values were dramatically varying with respect to look angle with some special angles providing the large values of RCS. Generally, the RCS values of the UAV model was increasing with frequency as expected. A quantitative radar detection range analyses were also accomplished to assess the visibility of both the military-type and civil-type UAV models. The outcome of these studies has suggested that large-size UAV model can be easily detected by a high-sensitive radar on the ranges of tens of kilometers while these numbers reduce to a few kilometers for a civilian UAV model that is much smaller than the its military counterpart.

Application of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle for Mapping and Modeling of Indian Mines

Geospatial data play a key role in the preparation of mine plan, lease boundary fixing and volume calculation of minerals in the mine. The conventional practice proposed by Indian Bureau of Mine is using differential global positioning system (DGPS), CartoSAT/LISS IV satellite imagery and cadastral maps to provide lease boundary fixing, digital elevation model of mine and rectified cadastral map. Most of the mine has steep terrain which is difficult to survey using DGPS/total station, and it involves human risks. The temporal resolution of the satellite, cost and time required to procure the satellite imagery is high. The increasing affordability of civilian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), aerial data acquisition is easy in any topography, time-saving and less cost compared to traditional survey technique like total station and DGPS. The main aim of this paper is to incorporate the proposed workflow to generate the high accurate geospatial data for Indian Mines through the integration of UAV and traditional survey technique. Based on the proposed workflow, UAV-based survey conducted on a iron ore mine and the output geodata were generated. The study discussed UAV geodata-based analytical technique to identify the encroachment, slope unstable area of mine, water disposal route and volume of the stockpile. This helps to reduce the violations in terms of quantity and area, provide a better decision support system to the lease of the mine and increase the revenue of the government.

Effects of a navigation spoofing signal on a receiver loop and a UAV spoofing approach

A civil navigation signal is vulnerable to interference and tampering owing to its open interface and low signal power. We focus on navigation spoofing. First, using a piecewise function, we quantitatively analyze the effects of the navigation spoofing signal on the receiver tracking loop. For a phase-locked loop, the spoofing signal extends the pull-in range of the discriminator. The autocorrelation gain of the spoofing signal has a different effect on the slope of the discriminator, depending on whether the discriminator is related to the signal amplitude. For the delay-locked loop, taking the non-coherent early minus late power method as an example, the unlocking condition and interval are analyzed quantitatively using the spoofing amplitude gain and the initial phase cosine of the spoofing and authentic carriers. A carrier frequency difference between the spoofing signal and authentic signal causes a phase jump and attenuation of the amplitude gain. Second, in luring an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to a designated location, we assume a UAV model and provide a spoofing strategy. Experimental results show that it is feasible to lure a civilian quadrotor UAV to a designated location about 50 m from where the UAV believes it is located.

The acceptance of civil drones in Germany

In recent years, civil drones have become more and more visible in everyday life. There are numerous reports in the media covering a variety of drone aspects and technical developments. In addition, everyone is used to bird’s-eye views as common features in television, movies and photography. However, little is known about how the public perceives this development. This article reports the results of a representative national study on the acceptance of civilian drones. Overall, a balanced but slightly positive attitude towards civil drones was revealed. Factors analyzed include age, gender, place of residence or interest in technical matters, as well as the individual level of knowledge about the topic. Free verbal associations with the general term drone are described as well as concerns about the usage of civil drones. Concerning different applications of civil drones, results indicate clear approval in Germany for the use of drones in civil protection, rescue missions and research work. However, flights for advertising, leisure and parcel delivery purposes are disagreed with by at least half of those questioned. In the presentation of the results, this article describes social acceptance of civilian drones and thus helps to better understand the perception of civil unmanned aerial vehicles.