Secure trajectory planning for UAVs in dynamic target tracking against undetectable sensor and actuator attacks

Area of Science:

• Robotics and Control Systems
• Aerospace Engineering
• Cybersecurity for Autonomous Systems

Background:

• Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) face significant security challenges in adversarial environments.
• Sensor and actuator attacks can compromise UAV trajectory and mission success.
• Existing detection methods may fail against sophisticated, undetectable adversarial strategies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a secure flight trajectory design for UAVs against undetectable attacks.
• To ensure UAVs maintain their predetermined paths despite sophisticated adversarial interference.
• To explore the conditions for undetectable attacks on Global Positioning System (GPS) and Laser Distance Sensor (LDS).

Main Methods:

• Mathematical modeling of undetectable attacks on UAV sensors and actuators.
• Analysis of attack detection limitations for combined GPS and LDS systems.
• Application of Pontryagin's Maximum Principle for secure trajectory planning.

Main Results:

• Identified conditions under which attacks remain undetectable by GPS and LDS.
• Demonstrated the existence and feasibility of secure flight trajectories for UAVs.
• Validated the proposed strategy's effectiveness through numerical simulations and Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) experiments.

Conclusions:

• The proposed Pontryagin's Maximum Principle-based strategy effectively plans secure UAV trajectories.
• UAVs can successfully reach destinations even when subjected to undetectable sensor and actuator attacks.
• The strategy offers a robust solution for enhancing UAV security in adversarial conditions.