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Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are widely utilized for environmental monitoring, precision agriculture, infrastructure inspection, and various defense missions, including reconnaissance and surveillance. Their cybersecurity is essential because any compromise of communication, navigation, or control systems can cause mission failure and introduce significant safety and security risks. Therefore, this paper examines the existing literature on UAV cybersecurity and highlights that most previous surveys focus on listing different types of attacks or communication weaknesses, rather than evaluating the problem from a control systems perspective. Considering control systems is important because the safety and performance of a UAV depend on how cyberattacks affect its sensing, decision-making, and actuation loops; modeling these attacks and their impact on system behavior provides a clearer foundation for designing secure, resilient, and stable control strategies. Based on a comprehensive review of the literature, it presents a mathematical framework for characterizing common cyberattacks on UAV communication and sensing layers, including time-delay switch, false data injection, denial of service, and replay attacks. To demonstrate the impacts of these attacks on UAV control systems, a simulation of a two-UAV leader-follower multi-agent system is conducted in MATLAB. Defense algorithms from the existing literature are then organized into a hierarchical framework of prevention, detection, and mitigation, with detection and mitigation further categorized into model-based, learning-based, and hybrid approaches that combine both. The paper concludes by summarizing key findings and highlighting challenges with current defense strategies, including those insufficiently addressed in existing research.more » « less
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Connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) rely on communication channels to improve safety and efficiency. However, this connectivity leaves them vulnerable to potential cyberattacks, such as false data injection (FDI) attacks. We can mitigate the effect of FDI attacks by designing secure control techniques. However, tuning control parameters is essential for the safety and security of such techniques, and there is no systematic approach to achieving that. In this article, our primary focus is on cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC), a key component of CAVs. We develop a secure CACC by integrating model-based and learning-based approaches to detect and mitigate FDI attacks in real-time. We analyze the stability of the proposed resilient controller through Lyapunov stability analysis, identifying sufficient conditions for its effectiveness. We use these sufficient conditions and develop a reinforcement learning (RL)-based tuning algorithm to adjust the parameter gains of the controller, observer, and FDI attack estimator, ensuring the safety and security of the developed CACC under varying conditions. We evaluated the performance of the developed controller before and after optimizing parameters, and the results show about a 50% improvement in accuracy of the FDI attack estimation and a 76% enhancement in safe following distance with the optimized controller in each scenario.more » « less
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The combination of connectivity and automation allows connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) to operate autonomously using advanced on-board sensors while communicating with each other via vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) technology to enhance safety, efficiency, and mobility. One of the most promising features of CAVs is cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC). This system extends the capabilities of conventional adaptive cruise control (ACC) by facilitating the exchange of critical parameters among vehicles to enhance safety, traffic flow, and efficiency. However, increased connectivity introduces new vulnerabilities, making CACC susceptible to cyber-attacks, including false data injection (FDI) attacks, which can compromise vehicle safety. To address this challenge, we propose a secure observer-based control design leveraging Lyapunov stability analysis, which is capable of mitigating the adverse impact of FDI attacks and ensuring system safety. This approach uniquely addresses system security without relying on a known lead vehicle model. The developed approach is validated through simulation results, demonstrating its effectiveness.more » « less
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Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) have the potential to revolutionize transportation by addressing critical challenges such as safety, energy efficiency, traffic congestion, and environmental impact. Realizing these benefits, however, requires the development of a rigorous testing and verification framework to enable the safe, efficient, and reliable deployment of CAVs across diverse operational scenarios. Despite the growing body of research, there remains a significant gap in review papers that comprehensively summarize recent studies related to the testing and verification of CAVs while identifying current challenges and highlighting future research directions. This paper seeks to address this gap by presenting a comprehensive review of the existing testing and verification frameworks for CAVs and identifying their associated challenges. Key topics covered include scenario generation, verification cost functions, assertion values, and security considerations. Furthermore, the paper highlights limitations within current frameworks, emphasizing the gaps that hinder systematic and comprehensive evaluations.more » « less
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