First successful "spoofing" of UAVs demonstrated
prior to the White Sands demonstration, Humphreys and his students worked with university athletics officials to perform a trial run at the Darrell K. Royal stadium.
High school students visiting campus for the university’s My Introduction to Engineering summer camp watched the demonstration and were able to ask Humphreys and his students questions about their work.
Humphreys began the research on GPS security prior to joining The University of Texas at Austin three years ago, but he said the research received a crucial boost of momentum and financial support from the university and the Cockrell School of Engineering.
“What’s great at The University of Texas at Austin is this structure and culture in place that supports incoming professors with the funds to do risky types of research — the kind that’s so bold and forward-thinking that it might not have an outside sponsor to fund it yet,” Humphreys said. “It’s a distinct and valuable trait of the university that benefits me, my students and the types of research we can pursue.”
The interdisciplinary research coupled undergraduate and graduate students from aerospace engineering and electrical and computer engineering; specifically, from the Center for Space Research and the Wireless Networking and Communications Group. Over the course of the project, students designed hardware and software, and learned to improvise on the spot when things didn’t always go their way.
“During the demonstration at White Sands I was so impressed by how resourceful my students were in the face of technical setbacks we had in the beginning,” Humphreys said. “They kept a steady hand and we prevailed in the end, which really showed me the flexibility of these young and bright minds.”
Daniel Shepard, an aerospace engineering graduate student who lead the UAV spoofing effort, said he was grateful for the opportunity to do the hands-on research beginning when he was an undergraduate student.
“It’s rewarding to lead research that has an impact on improving national security, and, on a personal level, this specific project had a lot of value for me because I was working on things, like software development, that I typically wouldn’t be involved with as an aerospace student,” Shepard said. “The unique fusion of electrical engineering and aerospace engineering has been very valuable for cultivating my engineering expertise.”
During the spoofing demonstration at White Sands, the research team took control of a hovering UAV from about a kilometer away. Next year, they plan to perform a similar demonstration on a moving UAV from 10 kilometers away.
