About the project
Connected autonomous vehicles must remain safe and reliable even under cyber attacks. This project will develop technologies that mitigate and recover from malicious attacks on these future vehicles. Combining cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, control engineering and real-world experimentation, you will help create resilient connected autonomous systems for future defence and civilian applications.
Connected autonomous vehicles are expected to play a major role in future transport, logistics and defence applications. However, their increasing dependence on sensors, wireless communications and artificial intelligence creates new vulnerabilities to cyber attacks. Malicious manipulation of vehicle sensors, communications or control algorithms could compromise safety and reliability.
This project will investigate how connected autonomous vehicles can be protected against cyber attacks while maintaining safe and resilient operation. The research will address fundamental questions including:
- how can cyber attacks on sensing, communication and control systems be detected and mitigated in real time?
- how do attacks propagate through complex autonomous vehicle architectures?
- how can autonomous systems continue to operate safely when subsystems are compromised or behaving maliciously?
The project will adopt a cyber-physical systems approach, combining cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, systems and control engineering, autonomous vehicle technologies and digital twins. Potential methodologies include threat modelling, anomaly and intrusion detection, robust control and estimation methods, and fault tolerant decision making. The developed techniques will be validated experimentally using representative attack scenarios and our instrumented connected autonomous electric vehicle platform.
The research is highly relevant to future defence and security applications, where autonomous systems must operate reliably in contested and adverse environments. Outcomes are expected to include novel methods for attack detection, mitigation and recovery, enabling connected autonomous systems to maintain safety and performance despite cyber threats.
