Fault Tolerant and Cyber Resilient Formation Control of Multiple UAVs

In recent times, there has been a notable increase in the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) worldwide, driven by a growing demand for their versatile applications across various domains. However, alongside their beneficial applications, there has been a concerning emergence of malicious UAVs use by cyber criminals. These unauthorized activities pose significant risks with the potential for destructive consequences. Consequently, there is a pressing need for the development and implementation of detection, protection, and prevention measures to mitigate these threats effectively. The primary objective of this paper is to explore the evolving risks associated with cyber-attacks in formation flights of UAVs along with the corresponding countermeasures aimed at tolerating such threats. The work proposes a hybrid fault diagnosis scheme and fault-tolerant cooperative controllers for multiple UAVs under faults and cyber attacks. The proposed hybrid fault diagnosis scheme combines rule-based and model-based approaches. Three realistic attack scenarios are simulated including the man-in-the-middle attack and the GPS spoofing. The results show that the proposed scheme is able to ensure the safe operation of UAVs in the fleet by effectively diagnosing faults and enabling proactive measures to mitigate potential risks.