Security-by-Design in UAVs: Enabling Intelligent Monitoring
A special issue of Drones (ISSN 2504-446X). This special issue belongs to the section "Artificial Intelligence in Drones (AID)".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 July 2026 | Viewed by 98
Special Issue Editors
Interests: cooperative localization; swarm control; social networks; opinion dynamics; multi-agent systems
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: data-driven learning control; networked system control; power system control and optimization
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: data-driven learning control; networked system control; power system control and optimization
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have become cost-effective tools for intelligent monitoring across public safety, infrastructure management and urban planning. However, their expanding application exposes critical vulnerabilities, such as cyber-attacks, positioning deviations, flight failure and privacy concerns, which threaten the scalable and trustworthy deployment of autonomous UAV systems. As we reach a tipping point in the use of UAVs for monitoring tasks, merely testing applications is insufficient. It is time to embrace a Security-by-Design paradigm, proactively embedding security principles into every stage of the UAV lifecycle, from hardware and software development to communications and operations. This foundational shift is crucial to fully unleashing the potential of UAVs for secure and intelligent monitoring.
The goal of this Special Issue is to collect papers (original research articles and review papers) to give insights into how to bridge the gap between the Security-by-Design and practical UAV operations.
This Special Issue will welcome manuscripts that link the following themes:
- Intelligent Obstacle Avoidance and Safe Navigation
- Battery Management and Communication Link Maintenance
- Data Security and Privacy Protection
- Precise Positioning and Relative Localization within Swarms
- Target Detection, Recognition and Tracking
- Autonomous Path Planning
- Safety-Guaranteed Cooperative Control
- Multi-UAV Formation and Swarm Security
- Applications in Public Safety and Critical Infrastructure Inspection
- Intelligent Perception and Cognitive Decision-Making for Complex Environments
- Emergent Intelligence and Adaptive Formations in UAV Swarms
- Cross-Domain Collaboration and Heterogeneous System Integration
- System Resilience and Safety Assurance for UAV
- Trustworthy Human–UAV Interaction and Levels of Autonomy
We look forward to receiving your original research articles and reviews.
Prof. Dr. Lei Shi
Prof. Dr. Yi Zhou
Prof. Dr. Xuhui Bu
Prof. Dr. Lingling Lv
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Drones is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- multi-UAV systems
- security-by-design
- cybersecurity
- relative localization
- autonomous navigation
- cooperative control
- privacy protection
- intelligent monitoring
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