Engineers Designing Autonomous Border-Surveillance System

Young-Jun Son, professor and head of the UA Department of Systems and Industrial Engineering, has been tapped as principal investigator for a UA team designing an autonomous border-surveillance system that can collect, assess and act on data in real time -- and deploy drones on its own.

Son and his co-principal investigator, UA associate professor of systems and industrial engineering Jian Liu, started work in March with government backing in the form of a three-year, $750,000 grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. The system will be integrated for land and aerial vehicles monitoring the nation’s southern border.

“Our goal is to devise a system to most effectively, efficiently and safely deploy border patrol resources,” Son said.