TAMU-CC Cybersecurity REU:
Zoning for Regulating Unmanned Aerial Systems Access Control:
The purpose of this project is to present a viable real-world solution to personal privacy as pertaining to drone flight. To do this, a proposed three zone system is used, these zones being green, yellow, and red zones. Green zones are fly zones and red zones are no-fly zones. Yellow zones are red zones with the capability to become temporary green zones should a path be unfindable as per the given algorithm.
The presented algorithm utilizes an implementation of the A* "a star" path planning technique to develop a path of shortest length from a given origin and destination, both of which are defined in the main function of the program. To adhere to zoning preferences of users, the program grids all reds zones onto a grid, which is then used to find a path. The algorithm explicitly avoids all visited nodes, or red zone coordinates. Currently, this implementation does not have capabilities to incorporate yellow zone use or avoidance, but that will be incorporated in the near future.
A major setback to the algorithm is the lack of connection to a server that contains all zoning preferences in a region. Consquently, the algorithm reads zoning coordinates off a text file, which are translated into the appropriate no-fly zones.