Zayed University (ZU) students showcased their senior projects relating to maximizing Drone usages in the fields Investigation and Interception by applying artificial intelligence (AI) into the devices software to boost security and safety missions.
During the participation at the the Unmanned Systems Exhibition and Conference (UMEX) and Simulation and Training Exhibition and Conference (SimTEX), which is took place in the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre from the 23 – 25 Feb 2020.
The (DDC) drone-to-drone communication project, which was developed and designed by Natnael Getahun and Yafiet Araya, undergraduates from the College of Technological Innovation (CTI) at ZU, applied (AI) technology to enable drones to learn and understand missing objects or people, and work together to identify them.
“We can relate to the scenarios of missing cars or people in the desert, our synchronized drone can work together via (AI) to track the missing objects,” said Araya. Adding, “Basically, our project is about how to make two or more drones communicate and integrate with each other and perform a task together based on the features that you want to apply.”
Getahun said that they applied AI onto the system of two drones, which they have successfully coordinated to find an object. “We entered details of a missing person whom we placed in a certain area. By connecting both drones with artificial intelligence, the drones communicated and one drone, which found the object, signaled a message to the other unit, making them both return to their base at the same time.”
The main purpose of (DDC) is to synchronize multiple drones together and make them communicate for a search objective on a larger scale, then thanks to the help of AI, these drones will halt the operation as soon as one unit accomplishes the objective.
Mariam Almahri and Maryam Alzaabi, students from the Zayed Univresity CTI college, developed a system related to drones interception, acquiring forensic image of the drone and controller, and analyzing the image to extract forensically relevant information or digital evidence for presenting them in the court of law.
“The first task was creating a Wi-Fi attack on test drone in order to intercept the drone and switch control to a smartphone in our position. We achieved the task by using ethical hacking techniques via different software tools including Kali Linux. In addition, We managed to extract logical and physical images of the SD card in order to recover data that was stored in the drone, and also managed to acquire the logical image of the drone owner,” Almahri said.
Alzaabi added that the purpose of the project is related to safety and security, “We can detect and intercept any strange drones and manage to extract the information on the drone to lead us towards the possessors.”
