UAV Amazon patents anti-hacking system for delivery drones

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Amazon has patented a system that aims to prevent delivery drones from getting hacked.

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The online retailer filed a patent titled "Hostile takeover avoidance of unmanned vehicles", which is set to make delivery drone operations safer.

Amazon´s aim is to give the drone heartbeat, which is being transmitted every few seconds from a controller tower.

If the heartbeat stops, the drone automatically predicts a hijack or damage and will switch to a “safety” mode. In this mode, the drone tries to reconnect to the hub and will then try to land safely. Safety mode ensures, that no signals can influence the behaviour and movement of the drone.

In the patent, Amazon wrote: “As the use of UAVs continues to increase, so does the likelihood of hostility towards UAVs. Such hostility may come in the form of attacks brought for any number of purposes (e.g., steal the UAVs and their payloads, crash the UAVs, and otherwise cause disruption to the operation of the UAVs).”

Over several years, Amazon has been working on bringing delivery drones to the everyday life. But to date, the company was not able to find a solution for a fully safe operation. The project earned public criticism several times for not having figured out, how to land the drone without distractions by pets, children or thieves. The new patent could bring the needed features to finally bring delivery drones to normal life.

Amazon was established in 1994 and has its headquarters in Seattle, Washington. The company employed 566,000 people in 2017 with a revenue of US$177.86 billion.

Source © patft.uspto.gov

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