International Scientific Journals
of Scientific Technical Union of Mechanical Engineering "Industry 4.0"

An increasing number of drones with a specific purpose are being developed globally. They are used in agriculture for crop monitoring and spraying, as well as in national defence, border control, etc. Time-consuming and expensive monitoring and tracking activities can be performed more efficiently in terms of time, cost and safety. The aim of this research is to develop an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) platform equipped with onboard artificial intelligence capability for automated monitoring of roads and roadsides. Roadside monitoring is intended for road sections where the presence of a human supervisor is unreasonable or limited by safety standards. The UAV will be set to fly along a predetermined route without pilot intervention. By using machine vision, road sections where defects have appeared are identified and recorded for later human inspection. The solution developed as a result of this study can be adapted for industrial use, for example, maintenance monitoring of conveyors or large storage areas on the premises of factories.

As Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) are converging an Internet of Things-like infrastructure, always connected to the internet, cryptographic security becomes a primary concern to ensure confidential, but even more importantly tamper-proof transport of data. Another emerging problem is the high number of unregistered drone flights, with no regard towards airspace regulations. The wellestablished and standardized processes of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) can be utilized for electronic identification of drones and associating them to the owner, while providing encryption and integrity protection of data. Nowadays various companies provide PKI for drones. This material summarizes the trends, challenges, possibilities of hardware-based on-board secure storage of secrets and describes a possible solution for government-level electronic administration of drones and owners.

Agricultural labor is physically demanding, tedious and often carried out in unfavorable conditions, making it suitable for robotization. Due to climate change and the swift increase of the human populace on Earth, the hunger is becoming increasingly an issue (currently, around 2 billion people suffer from malnourishment). With the aim of maximal efficiency of the production of plant food, an accelerated introduction of robotics in the field of agriculture is required (Agriculture 4.0).

However, several counter-drone solutions exist, these are individual, isolated means of countering drones. The aim of the paper is to sum up the counter-commercial-drone solutions and to highlight the possible synergic effects of employing these assets as a system. The author reckons that during the formulation of counter-drone systems, the basic tenets of defensive counter-air and airspace control also can be applied. In the paper, the expression of drone means a remotely piloted aircraft system which can be purchased from commercial stores or from internet based stores.

Technological innovations and radical products that drive the whole world forward can sometimes have an impact on different areas than planned. The drones ‘ positive impact on innovative agriculture has yet to be manifested in the stages of land and seed preparation. Advanced drone technology enables realistic 3D maps to be created, leading to soil analysis and seed development. Drones successfully manage the seed planting process in the soil. Furthermore, thanks to advanced imaging techniques and special thermal sensors, which part of the field needs water and where nutrients need to be supplemented easily can be determined.

Small UAVs and micro-drones are becoming more and more available to the general public for leisure activities and exploited in commercial applications. However, there is growing concern for accidental or even criminal misuses of these platforms. Radar systems can provide good capabilities, especially at long ranges and poor visibility conditions. Design considerations for distributed millimeter wave radar networks, particular suitable for high density populated urban areas, are given in the report. Special attention is given to: The choice of suitable working frequency bands; The use of antenna beam-forming networks, based on proposed by the author Random Phased Radial Line Slot Antennas and correlation signal processing; The radar signal waveforms in order to obtain un-ambiguity autocorrelation function and small radar resolution volume, as well as to the use of the external coherency principles of Doppler detection.