{"id":42593,"date":"2026-03-17T09:09:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T13:09:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/?p=42593"},"modified":"2026-03-17T09:09:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T13:09:17","slug":"thermal-cameras-used-in-drones-and-robots-can-be-tricked-by-heat-sources-study-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/cise\/thermal-cameras-used-in-drones-and-robots-can-be-tricked-by-heat-sources-study-finds\/","title":{"rendered":"Thermal cameras used in drones and robots can be tricked by heat sources, study finds"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list has-light-gray-background-color has-background\">\n<li>UF researchers discovered three vulnerabilities in thermal cameras that could cause drones or autonomous vehicles to miss real obstacles or detect ones that aren\u2019t there <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The flaws can be triggered by environmental heat sources without hacking the device <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The team also developed real-time defenses to detect and filter misleading thermal signals<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>As thermal cameras become commonplace on autonomous drones and vehicles, a University of Florida engineering professor is working to make sure&nbsp;they&nbsp;can\u2019t&nbsp;be maliciously&nbsp;tricked into&nbsp;\u201cseeing&#8221;&nbsp;things that&nbsp;aren\u2019t&nbsp;there.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Work by&nbsp;UF&#8217;s&nbsp;Sara&nbsp;Rampazzi, Ph.D.,&nbsp;and her research group&nbsp;reveals that thermal-based&nbsp;perception&nbsp;systems may be far less reliable and secure than previously assumed, especially for safety\u2011critical tasks like obstacle avoidance in autonomous robots and aerial drones.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thermal cameras \u201csee\u201d in conditions where normal cameras fail&nbsp;(night, fog, smoke,&nbsp;rain)&nbsp;by detecting heat differences rather than visible light.&nbsp;&nbsp;These&nbsp;sensors help machines&nbsp;identify&nbsp;people,&nbsp;animals&nbsp;and obstacles when visibility is poor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Rampazzi is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer &amp; Information Science &amp; Engineering, known as CISE. The work was presented at the 2026 Network and Distributed System Security Symposium by her Ph.D. student Sri Hrushikesh Varma Bhupathiraju.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/news.ufl.edu\/2026\/03\/thermal-cameras\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Read full story at UF News<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As thermal cameras become commonplace on autonomous drones and vehicles, a University of Florida engineering professor is working to make sure\u00a0they\u00a0can\u2019t\u00a0be maliciously\u00a0tricked into\u00a0\u201cseeing&#8221;\u00a0things that\u00a0aren\u2019t\u00a0there.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":42597,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"single-templates\/single-full-width-image.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"featured_post":"off","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[13,57,61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cise","category-stories","category-research-innovation"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42593"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42599,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42593\/revisions\/42599"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}