Joint development venture with National Institute of Communications Technology (NICT).

September 28, 2015
Press Release

Developing the technology to strengthen the safety of drone communications
-Quantum key distribution network provides encryption for safe drone flight operation and control-

Prodrone Co., Ltd. (Masakazu Kono, President) together with San-Es Trading Co., Ltd. (Representative Director, Masao Sakauchi) and National Institute of Communications Technology (NICT, Masao Sakauchi, Chairman), have developed new technology to enhance flight control communication of drones. By safely sharing a true random number key between the drone and the operator, and encrypting control commands on the packet level allows protection against the hacking and overriding of drones, as well as information leakage. Moreover, to develop a secure control communication technology for drone flight guidance over a wide area, experiments were successfully conducted confirming the concept of relayed drone operation between multiple stations by using multiple keys on one drone through a quantum key distribution system.

The commercial application of this technology is expected to come in two years. The application of this technology as a flight control system will aim to install random number generators in the operating stations, and after user and device authentication, the keys are distributed to the drones, while the keys for land stations are to be transported by hand.
The result of this experiment will be exhibited at the Updating Quantum Cryptography and Communications (UQCC) 2015 held at Hitotsubashi Hall on September 28.

For further details, please refer to the PDF file from here.

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