Development of technology to identify drones in the sky and prevent illegal drone operations.

The Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) is developing technology to identify drones in the sky and prevent illegal drone operations in order to establish a low-altitude air traffic control system at an altitude of about 150 meters (m) above the ground.

The research team announced that they have begun developing security technologies and illegal activity suppression technologies related to drone identification, authentication, encryption of information exchanged, countermeasures against hacking, and privacy protection such as photography for a low-altitude unmanned aerial vehicle traffic management system.

Accordingly, the Ministry of Science and ICT, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, and other ministries are promoting the "Low-Altitude Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Traffic Management Surveillance Technology Development and Demonstration Test Project" as a multi-ministry project to establish and develop a traffic management system for the rapidly increasing number of unmanned aerial vehicles.

With the explosive growth of low-altitude unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and related services, such as drone delivery, expected in the future, establishing a traffic management system for low-altitude UAVs is essential.

Once the traffic management system is established by the research team, it is expected to have positive functions such as setting flight routes for safe flights, preventing flights to unauthorized areas, avoiding collisions between drones, monitoring the flights of unauthorized drones, and suppressing illegal activities and privacy invasions using drones.

The research team is developing ▲an identification authentication module ▲a module for authentication and encryption of drones ▲technology to prevent forgery of drone flight path and no-fly zone information ▲malicious code detection and response technology ▲technology to protect the privacy of collected video information, etc., to identify drones and prevent forgery of identification.

Once this technology is developed, it will be approvedIn the case of drones, after selecting a flight path, it can automatically determine whether flight is possible, and safe flight is also possible.

Additionally, it will enable those seeking to use low-altitude drones for commercial purposes to automatically identify security zones. The research team anticipates that this will allow for the systematization of drone-related regulations through technological development.

"This technology can counter security threats that may arise when operating low-altitude unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) such as drones," said Kang Yoo-seong, project leader at ETRI's Information Security Research Center. "It will help minimize damage and privacy violations caused by drones."