Interception of Non-Cooperative UAVs

The widespread use of unlicensed UAVs has been posing serious safety and security concerns, e.g., the risk of over-flying restricted airspaces, such as airports. Therefore, there is a need for the neutralisation of rogue UAVs that are found violating airspace restrictions. This paper proposes a solution for neutralising non-cooperative UAVs based on high-speed interception using another UAV. The task of intercepting a non-cooperative Target while minimising the time to interception is challenging, as it demands both Target tracking while pushing the actuation envelope of the Interceptor to its limits. We approach this problem using a navigation, guidance and control architecture. For navigation, we use a Kalman Filter, in order to estimate both the Target and Interceptor's relevant states. For guidance, we adopt a Proportional Navigation control method, feeding the desired references into a Thrust Vectoring Controller algorithm. The proposed solution was validated using a real UAV intercepting virtual Targets and quantitatively evaluated using a precise Motion Capture System.