Image: Septentrio
As drones are becoming a popular mode of delivery, surveillance, inspection, and mapping, they need to be resilient to spoofing. On Dec. 15, Septentrio hosted a webinar about detecting, mitigating, and protecting against spoofing on UAV autopilots.
Topics discussed included how GPS/GNSS technology fit into the autopilot ecosystem, signs of GPS spoofing and UAV vulnerabilities, realistic demonstrations of spoofing, how to mitigate spoofing, and autopilot compatibility with resilient GPS modules.
Wim De Wilde, R&D Team Leader at Septentrio, facilitated a presentation on vulnerabilities of UAVs. It included detecting signal anomalies and inconsistencies in GPS receivers to flag spoofing, technology used to spoof or hijack drones, and recommendations to prepare autopilots before take-off.
The next presentation, by Ramon Roche, General Manager at DroneCode Foundation and PX4 Autopilot, explained PX4 products that have built-in resilient GPS receivers. Greg Lopes, Hardware Design Engineer at Zipline, further elaborated about the importance of having robust, resilient GPS receivers to mitigate spoofing as it relates to Zipline’s delivery drones.
Figure 1
One of the final presentations was a case study of an in-field simulation and spoofing test by Jack Ackermann, Director of Product Line Management at Spirent. The case study preparation and test results that were discussed in the webinar can be seen in Figures 1 and 2.
Septentrio holds frequent webinars, with knowledgeable guest speakers, regarding topics related to GPS/GNSS technology. Find previous webinars and learn about upcoming ones here.
Figure 2