July 1, 2025
Money from the grant funds research to thwart cyberattacks
With the exponential growth of artificial intelligence in everyday use, two faculty members at St. Mary’s University are keeping their hands on the wheel when it comes to making autonomous vehicles safer.
Through a grant from the U.S. Department of Defense, St. Mary’s Professor of Computer Engineering Wenbin Luo, Ph.D., and Lecturer of Engineering Ben Abbott, Ph.D. — working alongside Damiano Torre, Ph.D., at the University of Washington Tacoma — are focusing on finding and developing ways to protect AI-based drones, cars and robots from cyberattacks.
Autonomous vehicles are machines capable of navigating themselves from a starting point to a predetermined destination without human input, utilizing sensors, cameras and artificial intelligence.
“This grant enables us to do research on autonomous vehicles, AI and overall security,” Luo said. “In addition, we also want to use it as a teaching platform, so we can use what we learn and pass the knowledge on to our students.”
Finding security vulnerabilities is more than writing code, Abbott said. This includes finding disruptions in the machines’ ability to communicate and transmit data. The goal is to create an AI-based Intrusion Detection System that will detect threats by analyzing complex data patterns.
“Hacking a computer doesn’t have to be done by writing computer programs,” Abbott said. “Hacking a computer can be done by shining a laser at a car and causing the LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), which is a laser-based detection system, to get confused.”
The $340,510 grant funded the purchase of four ground robots, four flying drones and four autonomous vehicles (which are about 15 inches long and seven inches tall), housed in the Unmanned Aerial Systems Laboratory, or Drone Lab, on campus.
Scott Roelker (B.S. ’25), who began work on the project before graduating in May, is continuing as a Computer Engineering graduate student, assisting Luo and Abbott with the research.
“This will give me a chance to research how cyberattacks affect AI systems and how they can be detected,” Roelker said. “I am excited about the insights that my research will bring and the challenges that I will overcome.”
Another goal of the equipment is to use it to encourage the exploration of STEM courses by high school students and to show how AI is being used in the real world.
“We definitely want to use this as an outreach opportunity for prospective students,” Luo said.