University of Waterloo

Purpose

As the use of drones as part of Canada’s transportation logistics system increases, more research is necessary to provide evidence-based conclusions to support the ongoing and future development of technical and operations guidelines, standards and regulations. As a result, this Project interlaces three different disciplines (vision, machine learning, and cyber security) to achieve the overall goal of creating a new generation of autonomous drones that can safely land indoors or outdoors if problems arise with their navigational and sensory systems, whether due to accident, technical failure, or attack. In addition, the Project aims to provide these drones with important safety features such as automated object/human in-motion avoidance capabilities that support the objectives of regulations that are either currently in effect, or are being drafted for this purpose.