This work considers the problem of intercepting rogue drones targeting sensitive critical infrastructure facilities. While current interception technologies focus mainly on the jamming/spoofing tasks, the challenges of effectively locating and tracking rogue drones have not received adequate attention. Solving this problem and integrating with recently proposed interception techniques will enable a holistic system that can reliably detect, track, and neutralize rogue drones. Specifically, this work considers a team of pursuer UAVs that can search, detect, and track multiple rogue drones over a sensitive facility. The joint search and track problem is addressed through a novel multiagent reinforcement learning scheme to optimize the agent mobility control actions that maximize the number of rogue drones detected and tracked. The performance of the proposed system is investigated under realistic settings through extensive simulation experiments with varying number of agents demonstrating both its performance and scalability.

This work investigates the problem of simultaneous tracking and jamming of a rogue drone in 3D space with a team of cooperative unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). We propose a decentralized estimation, decision and control framework in which a team of UAVs cooperate in order to a) optimally choose their mobility control actions that result in accurate target tracking and b) select the desired transmit power levels which cause uninterrupted radio jamming and thus ultimately disrupt the operation of the rogue drone. The proposed decision and control framework allows the UAVs to reconfigure themselves in 3D space such that the cooperative simultaneous tracking and jamming (CSTJ) objective is achieved; while at the same time ensures that the unwanted inter-UAV jamming interference caused during CSTJ is kept below a specified critical threshold. Finally, we formulate this problem under challenging conditions i.e., uncertain dynamics, noisy measurements and false alarms. Extensive simulation experiments illustrate the performance of the proposed approach.

Researchers at the University of Buffalo have received a $316,000 grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), an agency funded by the US Department of Defense, to develop an artificial intelligence capable of controlling swarms of up to 250 drones. To created the experimental AI, scientists from the university's Artificial Intelligence Institute will study video game players as they pilot autonomous swarms of digital military units in real time strategy games like StarCraft, Stellaris, and Company of Heroes. The team will collect data on how the players react to a wide variety of different tactical challenges as well as watching how they react to unexpected changes in the terrain or terms of battle. Researchers at the University of Buffalo's Artificial Intelligence Institute will study the way video game players make choices in real time strategy games like StarCraft and Company of Heroes to develop an AI that can control swarms of up to 250 drones'We don't want the AI system just to mimic human behavior; we want it to form a deeper understanding of what motivates human actions,' University of Buffalo's Souma Chowdhury told the school's news site. 'That's what will lead to more advanced AI.' The team will also collect a range of biometric data from the players, through eyetracking software and electroencephalograms, which monitors brain activity while they play.

This week, DARPA shared footage of an experimental new program that uses large drones swarms to locate targets and gather situational intelligence in urban raid missions. Part of DARPA's Offensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics (OFFSET) program, the test featured a coordinated group of 250 autonomous air and ground vehicles. Those vehicles were sent into to a simulated urban environment, providing live information about sight lines, enemy positioning, environmental hazards, and general layout as part of a simulated military raid. The test was conducted at DARPA's Camp Shelby Joint Forces Training Center, a facility in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. The missions tasked the drone swarm with finding several AprilTags, a kind of QR code, that had been placed inside buildings in the training compound, which was designed to approximate a city block.

An estimated 7 million drones will be flying in the skies by 2020; Claudia Cowan reports on the new technology being developed to keep airports safe. But some people either don't care or use drones to intentionally disrupt airport operations. Last December, drone sightings at London's Gatwick Airport forced a three-day shutdown, and canceled flights left thousands of stranded passengers scrambling. No one has been arrested in the case, and this past April, investigators said it could have been an inside job. In recent months, suspected or confirmed drone activity has grounded flights in Dubai, New Zealand, Israel, and at Newark Airport in New Jersey.

Rogue drones "deliberately" flown over one of the UK's busiest airports caused travel chaos this week. Incoming planes were forced to divert to airports up and down the country as the drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), repeatedly appeared over the airfield at London's Gatwick Airport. The situation was so serious the Army was called in to support the local police in tackling the issue, with the runway finally re-opening on Friday morning. For some time now, governments around the world have been looking at different ways of addressing the dangers of drone use in areas where they pose safety risks. Here we look at some of the solutions - ranging from bazookas to eagles.

Drones have caused Gatwick Airport to come to a standstill. Tens of thousands of passengers are suffering travel chaos after two unmanned aerial vehicles were spotted near the UK airfield. The runway was first closed at 9pm on Wednesday after two drones were seen. It was then reopened at 3am on Thursday, however it was shut again 45 minutes later after a further sighting of drones and has remained closed. "There is significant disruption at Gatwick today as a result of what appears to be a deliberate attempt to disrupt flights," the airport said.

Thousands of passengers have seen their flights from Gatwick Airport cancelled after two drones were spotted flying over the airfield within a 12-hour period. The runway is currently shut as officials investigate. So why has a drone caused so much disruption and what are the risks posed by these devices? The term "drone" for some prompts images of air strikes but the sophisticated flying robots used on the battlefield are unlikely to be what we are talking about here. The vast majority of unmanned aerial vehicles are actually small, remote-controlled quadcopters used by hobbyists and photographers.

Rogue drones have nearly caused air accidents, have been used as offensive weapons, to deliver drugs to prisoners, and to spy on people. So how can we fight back? This summer a packed Airbus A321 came within 100ft (30m) of disaster after encountering a drone at 15,500ft. And the number of near-misses of this sort has trebled over the last three years, with 92 incidents reported last year in the UK alone. Dozens were classified as involving a serious chance of a collision.

Fortem Technologies has announced the release of DroneHunter, a military-tested unmanned aerial system (UAS) that provides perimeter intrusion detection and protection by autonomously patrolling an airspace and towing away any rogue drones from the sky. Using AI algorithms, the DroneHunter system provides detection, monitoring and capture of rogue drones over restricted airspace or no-fly zones. Once a rogue drone is detected and captured, DroneHunter can tether and return, or safely discard to a predefined safe zone. "Drones are accessible to everyone now and are beginning to proliferate to enable many new services," said CEO of Fortem Technologies, Timothy Bean. "However, to fully embrace these benefits, we must monitor the airspace and secure no-fly zones. Fortem's safe, low-cost detection and mitigation systems like DroneHunter are game-changing, enabling the benefits of a drone world to be realized."