The world is witnessing the soaring production of drones and small UAVs in emerging markets for consumer and civil applications. Drones are being deployed in great numbers and at lower costs and this trend will continue for many years to come.
This proliferation is however generating serious security issues. There are many recent examples of drones flying over critical infrastructures (CI), such as airports, nuclear plants, official buildings, or during public events.
UAVs can represent passive or active threats of criminal activities or terrorism by 1) collecting intelligence information in order to prepare malicious actions; 2) using payloads to transport explosives; 3) causing serious collision threats like around airports.
It is therefore important for society to protect the citizens against such malevolent actions and their potential impacts as well as giving confidence that these emerging threats are taken into consideration and that associated measures are put in place to prevent or limit the threats posed by malicious drones.
ALADDIN ambitions are to deliver a leading and evolving solution for the detection and neutralization of threatening UAV in restricted areas.
ALADDIN’s main objective is to study and develop a state-of-the-art, global, and extensible platform to detect, localise, classify, and neutralize suspicious, and potentially multiple, light UAVs over restricted areas. This platform will be tailored to operational constraints such as easiness of use and deployment, quality of detection, or safety, in order to deliver unprecedented tools for operational support, including investigations, and training.
ALADDIN is also assessing relevant technologies, threat trends, regulations, and other important issues such as societal, ethical, and legal (SoEL) frameworks in order to develop new knowledge made available to LEAs and infrastructure designers, constructors, and operators through innovative curricula.
