Small sticker could hide a fighter jet from an enemy drone

By Layal Liverpool

Aerial drone view of fighter jets

djedzura/Getty Images

Sticking a small patch on a large object like a plane can hide it from artificial intelligence systems trained to spot objects in drone footage. The technology could help conceal military assets from drone surveillance, say Ajaya Adhikari and Richard den Hollander at the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research.

They and their colleagues used an AI that generates a pattern to confuse a drone surveillance system called the YOLO object detector, which spots military objects in aerial images.

The researchers overlaid several patterns of different sizes on aerial photographs, and found …