Not playing around: UVic engineers take on hostile drones with $4.2 million investment
April 10, 2025
Engineering professor Homayoun Najjaran has been working with flying robots — drones — since 2007. But he’d seen at least some of their potential more than 10 years before that when, as a young engineer on a business trip, he encouraged his then boss to buy a remote-controlled aircraft as a gift for his child. It would, he thought, be fun for the kid.
However, the Singaporean customs agents didn’t buy the idea that it was only a toy. They saw more sinister applications and the boss’s son never did get his plane.
A few years on, at the ³Ô¹ÏÍø, engineering professor Afzal Suleman developed a strong program of aerospace engineering, including the Centre for Aerospace Research (CfAR) that connects research with students, industry and widespread social and environmental impacts.
Najjaran joined UVic in 2022 and, he says, “The unique platform of UVic and CfAR meant that everything was ready for me to come and build on with my own projects.”
Now, Najjaran’s lab of thirty graduate students, specializing in applied artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, has a roster of drones being tailored for a host of civilian applications.
So when Canada’s Department of National Defence (DND) requested a proposal for research and development of "intelligent, agile and low-cost ‘interceptor’" drones, and Najjaran saw the potential to add a new dimension to his work.
He and co-investigator and fellow UVic engineering professor Yang Shi recently received a $2.8 million five-year NSERC Alliance grant, coupled with an additional $1 million from the DND’s Department of Research and Development Canada and $200,000 each from Bombardier and Quaternion Aerospace Inc. The total project budget of $4.2 million for “Counter-UAS: Interceptor drone ‘design, build, test and fly” with AI-enhanced situational awareness” includes funding for more than 40 highly qualified personnel (HQP) including post-doctoral fellows, and PhD, master’s and undergraduate co-op students.
In the funding application, Najjaran built in a mandate to actively address gender bias and diversity in the hiring process. By advancing work-integrated learning of so many HQP, the project promises to advance more than interceptor drones; it should advance the industry as a whole.
The research itself will develop technologies for Canadian UAS, uncrewed aerial systems (drones or flocks of drones), to intercept and disable hostile drones. In order to do that job, the drones will have sensors for augmented situation awareness as well as AI-enhanced guidance, navigation and control to engage and neutralize any target non-cooperative drones.
“The availability, affordability, complexity and capabilities of even small commercial drones pose increasing threats to Canadian defence and security,” Najjaran says. He cites examples of such uncrewed aerial craft landing on the White House lawn and damaging wildfire-fighting equipment in California.
“The artificial intelligence methods and algorithms we develop,” Najjaran says, “will be readily deployable in real-world environments where safety and robustness are imperative.”
Their efforts will contribute to the operational readiness of the Canadian Armed Forces, including combat and surveillance operations. Najjaran adds that the advances will benefit many other civil and commercial applications, such as environmental monitoring, security, emergency response and surveillance, as well.
Going even further, Najjaran expects that individual technology components, like AI and 3D computer vision, will create yet more opportunities for innovation in academic and industrial research and development.
It turns out those farsighted customs agents were right. Homayoun Najjaran is proving that a remote-controlled plane can do a whole lot more than just play around.