Secure trajectory planning for UAVs in dynamic target tracking against undetectable sensor and actuator attacks

This paper addresses the challenge of designing a secure flight trajectory for the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in an adversarial environment. The main goal is to ensure the UAV can maintain the predetermined trajectory even when subjected to undetectable attacks on its sensors and actuators. First, the mathematical model of undetectable attacks is conducted, and the conditions under which these attacks cannot be jointly detected by the global positioning system (GPS) and the laser distance sensor (LDS) are specified. Then, the existence and implementation of secure flight trajectories for UAVs under undetectable attacks are explored. A strategy based on Pontryagin’s Maximum Principle is proposed to plan a safe trajectory. This strategy ensures that UAVs can safely reach their destinations, even when facing undetectable attacks. Finally, the superiority and effectiveness of the proposed strategies are proven through numerical simulations and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) experiments.