Blockchain-base structures for a secure and operate network of semi-autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles — UAVs, or drones — are now being operated by several military forces and currently, to a more limited extent, by civilian organizations. These latter operations, however, may eventually expand to exceed, in number and diversity, those of the military. Further expected development in battery capacity, construction materials and software, especially regarding machine learning algorithms and drone integration, will definitely increase UAVs’ autonomous. Unique risks associated with UAVs like risk of hackers’ attacks to intercept the control are also increasing. More incidents likely will occur once regulations are finalized that encourage more use that is widespread. Such incidents could result in multi-million dollar claims against businesses, operators and manufacturers.Blockchain is the basis technology for cryptocurrencies. However, Blockchain can have far larger applications in the field of UAVs, because Blockchain is highly distributed and publically viewable system of sequentially linked cryptographically.This paper presents a concept of application, where each UAV in the UAVNet is a Blockchain node, has on-board functionality for creating and reading transactions from the block, as well as communication tools for exchanging transactions with other UAVs.