Speaker:
Ashok Vardhan Raja
Purdue University Northwest

Abstract: In recent years, UAVs have seen significantgrowth in both military and civilian applications, thanks to their highmobility and advanced sensing capabilities. This expansion has been furtheraccelerated by rapid advancements in AI algorithms and hardware. While AIintegration enhances the intelligence and efficiency of UAVs, it alsointroduces new security and safety concerns due to potential vulnerabilities inthe underlying AI models. These vulnerabilities can be exploited by maliciousactors, leading to severe security risks and operational failures. This talk willfocus on securing the integration of AI into UAVs to ensure their resilience inadversarial environments. We will begin by analyzing the data sensing andprocessing pipeline of key sensors used in AI-enabled UAV operations,identifying areas where vulnerabilities may exist. Following this, we willexplore how to develop defense mechanisms to strengthen the robustness of theseAI-driven UAV systems against potential threats. AI-enabled anomaly detection. AI-enabledanomaly detection and AI-enabled UAV infrastructure inspection will beleveraged as case studies in this talk. The talk will also cover the use of Large LanguageModels to improve this integration's security.

About: Ashok Vardhan Raja is an Assistant Professor of Cybersecurity in the department of Computer Information Technology and Graphics for the College of Technology at Purdue University Northwest. His research is on secure integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Cyber Physical Systems (CPS)such as UAVs for robust operations. He is expanding his current work by using Swarm of UAVs to address security issues and to other domains in the integration of AI and CPS.

The weekly security seminar has been held every semester since spring of 1992. We invite personnel at Purdue and visitors from outside to present on topics of particular interest to them in the areas of computer and network security, computer crime investigation, information warfare, information ethics, public policy for computing and security, the computing "underground," and other related topics. More info