Differing Drones: From Security to Speed

Eric Codrea (MSR '22) has heard talk of companies considering drones as potential delivery tools, and those discussions piqued his curiosity. 

How easy would it be to take control of a delivery drone? And how much control could be possible?

Codrea wanted to understand how exploitable companies could be making themselves, so for his independent project in Northwestern Engineering's Master of Science in Robotics (MSR) program, he did just that.

Codrea needed an understanding of how drones worked for the project with an especially detailed focus on their wireless systems. 

That knowledge will be valuable moving forward. 

"The project appealed to me because I think the tech industry is leaning more and more toward interconnected systems," he said. "Therefore, I thought it was really important to learn how these systems can be penetrated virtually."

What he found is what keeps those pursuing drone delivery up at night.

“It is as easy to crack into drones that I tested as it is to crack into a wifi network,” he said. “A high level of control can be achieved due to the ability to send commands to the drone.”  

When it came time to pursue his final project for MSR, Codrea again turned to drones. This time, his focus wasn't hacking. It was speeding. His goal was to create a high-speed autonomous drone capable of breaking the record for fastest autonomous flight.  

"The appeal was me wanting to return more toward my roots of building hardware and focusing on creating a high performance system," he said. "Trying to build a drone to fly autonomously as fast as possible sounded like a challenge that ticked both boxes."

Codrea is in the midst of the two-quarter project. 

While his independent project did not require him to build a drone or work on its control systems, that is exactly what is required of the final project. Codrea said advanced understanding of drone flight, control theory, mechatronics, and embedded software development are necessary.

Both projects had — and continue to have — their challenges.

"For the first project, the biggest challenge was figuring out how to interface with hardware that was not meant to be interfaced with," he said. "The second project so far was challenging in terms of sourcing hardware due to a chip shortage."

Both projects also presented valuable learning lessons, which is the ultimate goal.

"The first project was a great lesson in security, while the second has really taught me how to extract performance from hardware," he said. "I would say I grew my ability as an engineer to track root causes of both hardware and software issues, and then figure out efficient ways to solve them."