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In-flight system failure is one of the major safety concerns in the operation of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in urban environments. To address this concern, a safety framework consisting of following three main tasks can be utilized: (1) Monitoring health of the UAV and detecting failures, (2) Finding potential safe landing spots in case a critical failure is detected in step 1, and (3) Steering the UAV to a safe landing spot found in step 2. In this paper, we specifically look at the second task, where we investigate the feasibility of utilizing object detection methods to spot safe landing spots in case the UAV suffers an in-flight failure. Particularly, we investigate different versions of the YOLO objection detection method and compare their performances for the specific application of detecting a safe landing location for a UAV that has suffered an in-flight failure. We compare the performance of YOLOv3, YOLOv4, and YOLOv5l while training them by a large aerial image dataset called DOTA in a Personal Computer (PC) and also a Companion Computer (CC). We plan to use the chosen algorithm on a CC that can be attached to a UAV, and the PC is used to verify the trends that we see between the algorithms on the CC. We confirm the feasibility of utilizing these algorithms for effective emergency landing spot detection and report their accuracy and speed for that specific application. Our investigation also shows that the YOLOv5l algorithm outperforms YOLOv4 and YOLOv3 in terms of accuracy of detection while maintaining a slightly slower inference speed.

Cyber Security and forensics for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) pose unique requirements, solutions, and challenges. As UAVs become increasingly prevalent for legitimate and illegal use, ensuring their security and data integrity is important. Solutions have been developed to tackle these security requirements. Drone forensics enables the investigation of security incidents involving UAVs, aiding in identifying attackers or determining the cause of accidents. However, challenges persist in the domain of UAV security and forensics. This paper surveys drone threat models, security, and privacy aspects. In particular, we present the taxonomy of drone forensics for investigating drone systems and talk about relevant artifacts, tools, and benchmark datasets. While solutions exist, challenges such as evolving technology and complex operational environments must be addressed through collaboration, updated protocols, and regulatory frameworks to ensure drones’ secure and reliable operation. Furthermore, we also point out the field’s difficulties and potential future directions.

With the growing use of drones in urban monitoring and emergency search and rescue, the three-dimensional environments they navigate are becoming more complex, including high-rise buildings, underground pipelines, and dynamic obstacles. Efficient path planning is crucial for drones to respond quickly, infiltrate covertly, and ensure mission success. This paper focuses on path planning in three-dimensional gridded urban environments, examining multi-strategy algorithms and Bézier curve optimization techniques for law enforcement operations. The study compares three algorithms: Rapidly-exploring Random Trees (RRT), Ant Colony Optimization (ACO), and A*. Each algorithm has distinct advantages: RRT is ideal for dynamic environments, ACO is effective for global searches, and A* is suited for structured environments. By evaluating these algorithms and combining them with Bézier curve optimization, this paper offers adaptable path planning strategies for applications like drone obstacle avoidance and robot navigation.

Recently, the number of drones has increased, and drones’ illegal and malicious use has become prevalent. The dangerous and wasteful effects are substantial, and the probability of attacks is very high. Therefore, an anomaly detection and protection system are needed. This paper aims to design and implement an intelligent anomaly detection system for the security of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)/drones. The proposed system is heavily based on utilizing ICMetric technology to exploit low-level device features for detection. This technology extracts the accelerometer and gyroscope sensors’ bias to create a unique number known as the ICMetric number. Hence, ICMetric numbers represent additional features integrated into the dataset used to detect drones. This study performs the classification using a deep neural network (DNN). The experimental results prove that the proposed system achieves high levels of detection and performance metrics.