AI for autonomous defense drones & surveillance
From policy to pilots: building trustworthy autonomous drones
About This Course
A three-day, hands-on workshop to build ethical, safe, auditable AI for non-weaponized autonomous drones in public-good missions—turning governance and privacy-by-design into requirements and hazard logs, making perception robust with calibration/OOD checks and model cards, and implementing human oversight, safe comms, geofencing, and coordinated multi-UAS behaviors—so you leave with concrete templates, test evidence, and operator SOPs.
Aim
Enable participants to design, test, and operate ethical, safe, and auditable AI for non-weaponized autonomous drones, translating policy into concrete technical controls and operator procedures.
Workshop Objectives
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Turn governance, ethics, and privacy-by-design into actionable requirements and controls.
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Build a policy-aware requirements matrix, hazard log, and clear geofence/abort criteria.
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Design robust perception with calibration & OOD detection to manage false alarms/misses.
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Create evaluation plans and model/system cards that document limits and safe use.
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Implement privacy-preserving sensing and human-on-the-loop supervision.
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Engineer fail-safe comms, logging/traceability, and coordinated multi-UAS behaviors.
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Compile an assurance case with test evidence and operator SOPs for audits/field trials
Workshop Structure
📅 Day 1 – Governance, Ethics & Compliance for Autonomous Aerial Systems
- Legal & ethical foundations: meaningful human control, safety-of-life priorities, privacy/civil-liberties by design
- Policy alignment: risk assessments, impact assessments, auditability, documentation (model/system cards)
- Data governance: consent, provenance, bias/representativeness, secure storage & retention limits
- Hands-on: Build a policy-aware requirements matrix and hazard log (e.g., STPA-lite) for a benign aerial monitoring use case (infrastructure inspection), including geofencing and abort criteria
📅 Day 2 – Robust Perception & Tracking (Safety-Critical & Non-Targeted)
- Robustness concepts: dataset shift, OOD detection, calibration, false-alarm vs miss trade-offs
- Evaluation & validation: test plans, scenario coverage, interpretability & explanations for operator trust
- Privacy-preserving sensing patterns: minimization, masking/redaction, on-device filtering
- Hands-on: Evaluate a pre-trained detector on a public, non-person dataset; compute calibration/OOD metrics, document results in a model card with limitations and safe-use guidelines
📅 Day 3 – Human Oversight, Safe Comms & Multi-Drone Coordination (Benign Missions)
- Human-on-the-loop interfaces: alerts, positive control, rate-limiters, locked-safety modes, no-fly & no-observe zones
- Communications safety: designing fail-safe behaviors for degraded/lost links (no evasion tactics), logging and traceability
- Multi-UAS coordination for public-good scenarios (e.g., search-and-rescue): collision avoidance, deconfliction, fairness of tasking
- Hands-on: Simulate a multi-UAS search-and-rescue mission with strict geofences and lost-link behaviors; produce an assurance case outline (safety case, test evidence, operator SOPs)
Who Should Enrol?
- Engineers/ML practitioners, UAS developers, QA/safety, PMs, compliance, public-sector tech.
- Basic Python, core ML (detection/classification), Git/CLI, clear documentation.
- ROS/ArduPilot/DroneSim, STPA/FMEA, model/system cards.
- Commitment to non-weaponized, public-good use; privacy-by-design & human control.
Important Dates
Registration Ends
November 10, 2025
IST 4:30
Workshop Dates
November 10, 2025 – November 12, 2025
IST 5:30 PM
Workshop Outcomes
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Ethics→requirements, clearly documented.
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Req matrix, STPA-lite hazard log, geofence/abort.
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Robust perception with calibration & OOD checks.
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Evaluation kit: scenarios, metrics, model/system cards.
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Human-on-the-loop controls, privacy-preserving sensing.
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Fail-safe comms + logging; coordinated multi-UAS; draft assurance case (tests + SOPs).
Recording fee
Participants in India
₹2,499
Participants outside India
$50
- All session recordings
- Study material
- Certificate after completion
- 1-year access
The live sessions of this workshop are over, so the live fees no longer apply. The recordings are being uploaded. They appear in your dashboard as soon as they are ready, and we will e-mail you then.
Frequently asked questions
Will I get the recording?
Yes. Paid participants get the session recordings and study material in their NanoSchool dashboard (My registrations → Recorded Lectures / Study Material).
What if I miss a live session?
Watch the recording in your dashboard and send your questions to the mentor through the support desk.
Do I get a certificate?
Yes, an e-certificate of participation after the workshop, with a QR code anyone can verify and an "Add to LinkedIn" button.
Which fee category applies to me?
Choose the category that matches your current role: Student, Ph.D. Scholar / Researcher, Academician / Faculty or Industry Professional.
How can I pay?
By card, UPI or PayPal on the payment page; international bank transfer is also available there.
What is the refund policy?
See our Returns, Refunds & Cancellation policy: Returns, Refunds & Cancellation policy