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NESTEC 2022 PAPER: Design And Implementation Of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle For Monitoring The 2023 General Election In Nigeria

Abstract

One of the major problems threatening the Nigerian state at present is the rising spate of electoral malpractices which has now assumed a formidable dimension. Electoral malpractice has posed dangerous threats to national integrity and statehood therefore is believed to have now necessitated yearnings for the use of intelligent gadgets like drones for effective aerial surveillance and intelligence gathering during elections in Nigeria. Drones also known as (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) are small aircraft that can fly without an onboard human operator. They are autonomous machines with installed cameras, sensors, communication equipments, or other payloads. Drones have been identified as the most effective for intelligence gathering, aerial surveillance, and security monitoring in recent times. In this paper, the various trends in the usage of drones for intelligent gathering during an election in Nigeria are captured. The study, therefore, reveals that drones are very effective in aerial surveillance, mapping system, and intelligence gathering, and therefore recommends that the Independent National Electoral Commission adopt the use of such an efficient gadget in the forthcoming 2023 General Election in Nigeria.

Keywords: Design, Implementation, Drones, 2023 General Election, Nigeria.

Author: Emmanuel N. Eke

Supervising lecturer: Engr. Assoc Prof. Cosmas Ogbuka

Click Link Below For Full Paper, Questions and make your COMMENTS

Design And Implementation Of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle For Monitoring The 2023 General Election In Nigeria

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45 thoughts on “NESTEC 2022 PAPER: Design And Implementation Of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle For Monitoring The 2023 General Election In Nigeria

  1. This is a very impressive work, your work is indeed commendable with a good practical analysis.
    My question here is in term of economy do you think this can be adopted in the country.?
    If yes, since drone is an electronic device and can easily be hacked and reset, is their any device in the research that could stop that from happening or that will be future addition?

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  2. The project involves a high technology so it’s not expected to be cheap, however it would be cost effective, by this i mean the value return by the project would equate or supersede the production cost.

    To answer your second question drones can only be hacked if the communication signal isn’t encrypted. Though this was not mentioned explicitly with all it’s technicality in the essay. But communication in my research drone will be end to end encrypted to avoid being manipulate by unauthorized people.

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  3. Having gone through the important parts the work, I would like first commend your efforts so far.

    I have seen that the objective of the work is to device a means to curb the persistent electioneering malpractice in the country.

    Now, I believe that this coming Nigerian general election will be electronic based i.e the issue of snatching ballot box, etc is now reduced drastically. The major problem now revolves around the collation of the final result which if care is not taken, can be manipulated to give false result.
    So, since your UAV can communicate with the INEC head office in real-time, is there any way you can integrate the UAV with the voting machine at the polling unit so that it can be sending the first hand results to the INEC head office?

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    1. Thank you so much Mr. Charles.

      So the UAV as an electronic gadget can be programmed to send or receive collation data from another gadget, but that’s not within the aim of the project, the drones primary duty is surveillance and not collation of result. I believe the card readers can be improved to solve this problem.

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  4. This is a really impressive work. It would be great if this idea gets implemented by the government for the upcoming elections

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    1. Thank you so much Eugene Ebere.

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  5. That’s a idea as it would help in curbing lots of electoral malpractices and violence associated. But then the best way it would bf operated is for its content to be streamed directly to the database hosted in INEC has to avoid any form of manipulation. My view

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    1. Yes.
      That’s exactly what the project proposed.
      Thank you Dennis Ejike.

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  6. Hi Agozie, this is an amazing proposal! You were meticulous enough to provide all relevant operational details about the UAV, while t the same time, juxtaposing it to the realities of Nigeria.

    On the other hand, I have two concerns I want you to address:

    1. According to data from world bank, about 47.25% of Nigerians live in rural areas. This is about 99,895,289 people. Poor internet connectivity has been a problem in some of these remote villages. How do you think the real-time streaming of surveillance data will be possible in such places?

    2. The 2023 elections are just five months away from us. Do you think INEC can get the necessary approval, funding and time to execute this project before the elections?

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    1. Good morning Kenneth, this project is designed to work in an ideal situation and by that I mean: an environment with reliable internet connection, however your argument cannot be ignored because 47% of our country’s population is a large number.

      There are a number of ways to solving this challenge of no or unreliable internet connection :

      1. The use of Ethernet cable or
      2. The use of Satellite Trucks

      These two methods can be used to create reliable networks for live streaming our recorded videos. But would incorporate outrageous cost, especially the use of satellite trucks, ethernet cable would in turn increase latency by a few seconds because we would need to introduce repeater in the connection to avoid attenuation cause by lengthy ethernet cables used.

      So I will suggest that the government assists telecommunication network providers in establishing Tele-Network / Internet in remote villages. This would go beyond solving the challenge encounter by my drone but also help in the transmission of information via digital methods.

      The answer to your second question is Yes it is possible, the Federal Govt. needs to see that the old system is no longer effective and adopt intelligent measures as this in monitoring elections in Nigeria.

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  7. How can this drone deal with manipulation of numbers of voters?

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    1. Good morning Sunday, I did not design this project to solve the issue of number of voters manipulation, because the Smart Card Readers introduced in 2015 is already solving that challenge.

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    2. Good morning Sunday, I did not design this project to solve the issue of number of voters manipulation because the Smart card reader introduced in 2015 is already solving this challenge.

      Nevertheless if you have a suggestion on how to improve the card reader or the drone to be more efficient in solving the outline problem kindly post it here.

      Thanks in anticipation.

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  8. The implementation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) in some tasks has gone a long way to improving the efficiency of such tasks.

    How will the UAV be distributed for the monitoring process? Is it based on the polling unit/ward/local government?

    How easy will the training of personnel for the UAVs be? Does it require much technical experience? 

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    1. Thank you so much Adeleke for your question.

      The drones will be distributed by polling units, i proposed that each polling unit should be given 15 drones. 5 out of the 15 drones will be used and the rest will be on standby in case any of the active drones becomes faulty or damaged.

      No the training of the Personnel will not require much technical experience because the drone system will be completely autonomous.

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  9. Will your drone be autonomous or will it require the presence of a human operator?

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    1. Greetings Mr. Hyginus, yes the drone will be autonomous, it doesn’t need a human pilot to control it’s movement, however a human will be on ground to monitor the drones flight.

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    2. The drone for this project will be completely autonomous in operation, that is i sending and receiving both signals and data.

      Though it would be monitored by a human.

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  10. As Elections in Nigeria would not be monitored by Nigerians alone, I mean International Observers would be involved and concerned too so do you think this project would meet international standards and what other countries of the world has used this solution and by your evaluation how effective has it been?

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    1. Yes this project will meet international standard. Because it is systematically designed in engineering method, optimizing factors such as safety, cost effectiveness, and efficiency.

      The use of drone to monitor election is rare and only a few country has tried it.
      On March 2021 Israel used UAV to monitor their election in order to control or avoid overcrowding in pooling units assigned to COVID patients and people in isolation.

      This approach was effective in reducing the spread of COVID-19 in the pooling units during the country’s election in 2021.

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  11. This is a great project.

    Could you answer this question for more clarification?

    Electoral malpractice in Nigeria has become as old as Nigeria itself and it has also eaten deep into the fabrics of our nationhood, I have a great concern for the generations to come and the present so when would this solution be deployed and can the good people of Nigeria trust this system to hoping that it would not be hijacked?

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    1. Thank you David.
      The project would be deployed as soon as it’s approved by the federal government.

      UAV can easily be hacked but with proper encryption it would be free from manipulation.

      So since this is a very sensitive drone I can assure you that the best will be but in place to avoid cases of manipulation.

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  12. Following what David Attamah asked, I also ask this question

    Emmanuel the major problem faced by Elections in Nigeria is that the electoral body (INEC) is not truly independent, in line with this argument do you think this solution will be unmanipulated by the powers above?

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    1. Good morning Onochie John in as much as electronic gadget can be programmed to be read-only, so that it’s functionality is not tampered with, the drone for this project can not be totally read-only at some time it will depend on data feed into it.

      This is one of the reasons why i made the drone to be autonomous, so when it request data by it self and receive data from it self it has a less chance of being manipulated. However the people handling the drone are have to be men/ women of integrity.

      Nevertheless I see a need of integrating a check in the drones operation.

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  13. Emmanuel, I don’t think making the plane autonomous will be ideal because of environmental, and security concern in Nigeria, I suggest the vehicle be manned by a trained operator.

    From your paper you planned to use 4 propellers, I suggest you use 2 in order to minimize cost?

    Why did you not integrate solar enabled system in this drone, to automatically charge the battery, since it would be used all day and there is no battery that would last for a space of 12 – 14 hours?

    What programming language would be used in designing this system?

    Can this system be used in rainy season?

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    1. Yes it will be based on the core Ai process. I’m using Reinforcement Learning (RL) to Train the drone on the best way to take off, fly; navigating properly in the course of it’s flight and avoiding objects in the air. I also to plan to use Deep Neural Network after Evaluating my RL Model.

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  14. Apart from underage voting and other vices permitted by corrupt INEC officials and ADHOC STAFF,one of the greatest challenges faced by voters is insecurity,intimidation of voters at pooling units,in what way would your solution help these challenges or at least reduce it to a very minimal level?

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  15. Apart from underage voting and other vices permitted by corrupt INEC officials and ADHOC STAFF,one of the greatest challenges faced by voters is insecurity,intimidation of voters at pooling units,in what way would your solution help these challenges or at least reduce it to a minimal level?

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  16. Apart from underage voting and other vices permitted by corrupt INEC officials and ADHOC STAFF,one of the greatest challenges faced by voters is insecurity, intimidation of voters at pooling units,in what way would your solution help these challenges or at least reduce it to a very minimal level?

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  17. Good evening.
    Since the drone would stream recorded video at real time, cases of electoral violence, voters intimidation can be observed by viewers which includes security agents, this would prompt the security agents to take necessary actions.
    Thank you.

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  18. 1. How will your image processing model handle a moving image quality?
    2. Which algorithm guides the navigation of the AUV?
    3. Since, the major problem with results uploading and other related issues is attributed to the poor network in remote areas. How does your system solve the problem?

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    1. Good evening Engr. B.K Nuhu having considered your questions, my comment are as follows.

      1. Amongst the use of high resolution cameras and an Inertial measurement unit to compensate for movement of the 3D objects observed by the UAV and the motion of the drone itself.

      The fundamental model used to handle moving objects image quality in this project is the CNN (Convolutional Neutral Network) algorithm. This is done by implementing four key steps which includes: Optical flow, motion blur removal, frame interpolation and data argumentation.

      2. The RL (Reinforcement learning ) algorithm is used to guide the navigation of the UAV in this project because RL algorithm can adapt to changing environments and tasks since it can be easily retrained to perform a new task in a new environment.

      3. The problem of poor or no cellular connectivity in rural areas can be addressed by the use of LoRa (Long range Radio) mesh network. Since LoRa can be used to create wireless mesh network that can provide connectivity over a wide area by connecting multiple nodes together.
      In addition to wide area / long range connectivity LoRa has an additional advantage of low- power consumption and low latency, these attributes make LoRa mesh network suitable for the project.

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  19. Emmanuel N. Eke
    1. How does your system relay all its images to the viewing centre
    2. How are you going to network all the drones to enable you manage that effectively

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    1. Good afternoon Assoc James Agajo.

      1. How my system relays all it’s images to the viewing centre:

      The relay of images is done by the LoRa mesh network.
      When the High resolution cameras in the drone capture an image, the LoRa transceiver module in the UAV transmits the image data to the ground based LoRa node which is deployed in a mesh network configuration to receive images from the UAV and relay it to other nodes in the network in order of their proximity until it reaches the viewing centre.
      When the image gets to the viewing centre, the transmitted images are processed and decoded by the image decoder. The image decoder can then display the image on a monitor in the viewing centre for Observers to see.

      2. The drones for this project are designed to be unmanned that is to say they don’t need any Radio remote nor a human operator. Each of the drone has been trained with the Reinforcement learning algorithm so that they know how to detect and avoid obstacles. Therefore the drones manage themselves using the Reinforcement learning Model pre installed in it to navigate it’s environment (a unique waypoint or route for each drone) efficiently.

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  20. 1. The research problem statement that ought to be a guiding principle is clearly lacking in the article. What is the guiding principle behind the implementation of this research?

    2. Other approaches had been applied with a sterling performance, what does this approach do differently, moreover, how will its performance be evaluated to establish its unique performance and relevance?

    No part of your article clearly explains how your system relay captured images to its base station, will your system still be relevant or useful without relaying captured images?.

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  21. 1. The research problem statement that ought to be a guiding principle is clearly lacking in the article. What is the guiding principle behind the implementation of this research?

    2. Other approaches had been applied with a sterling performance, what does this approach do differently, moreover, how will its performance be evaluated to establish its unique performance and relevance?

    3. No part of your article clearly explains how your system relay captured images to its base station, will your system still be relevant or useful without relaying captured images?.

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    1. Good evening Engr. Idris Aji Dauda.

      1. While it is conventional to include research problems, aims/ objectives and the likes, I did not include them here because I followed “the NESTEC 2022 instructions” religiously. ( Link to the PDF guide: https://engineersforum.com.ng/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/NESTEC-2022-INSTRUCTION.pdf )
      The instruction required authors to arrange the paper in this format:
      1. Title page
      2.Abstract
      3. Introduction
      4.Theoritical Analysis
      5.Experimental work
      6. Discussion
      7. Conclusion
      8. Reference.

      I think NESTEC proposed this arrangement because this is an essay and not a journal article, so to complied.

      However the problem the research aim to solve includes;

      1. Inadequate observation of electoral processes at the polling unit.

      2. Inability to relay information on time to security agents in rural areas during election in Nigeria.

      3. Promotion and propagation of anti electoral activities like vote buying, voter intimidation, election rigging, e.t.c

      Therefore the aims and objective of this work are:

      1. To design an unmanned aircraft for monitoring the 2023 general elections.

      2. To develop a wireless mesh network for transmitting observed images to viewing centers.

      3. To transmit and stream recorded video at real time.

      4. To promote transparency in electoral process.

      2. This is the first of it’s kind in Nigeria, and something like this has not be done before. While technologies like BVAS is used to Authenticate voter’s and transmit results to INEC server it can’t monitor electoral processes, it can’t transmit or stream observed situations at real time, data recorded with BVAS cannot be transmitted in rural area with no cellular network connectivity. Hence the need for the implementation of this novel project.

      This project can be evaluated measuring the latency in transmission of data packets.

      It can also be evaluated by checking the rate of data dropout.

      The image processing model can be evaluated to know how it handles the image quality of moving objects.

      Finally it can be evaluated by observing the flight accuracy of the drone since it’s designed to be unmanned.

      3. The recorded image will be transmitted with a mesh LoRa network.

      A description of how it is done:

      When the High resolution cameras in the drone captures images, the LoRa transceiver module in the UAV transmits the video data to the ground bases LoRa node which is deployed in a mesh network configuration to receive images from the UAV and relay it to other nodes in the network in sequence of proximity until it reaches the viewing centre.

      Now at the viewing centre transmitted images are processed and decoded by the image decoder. The image decoder can then display the image on a monitor in the viewing centre for Observers to see.

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  22. Good evening Sir.

    1. Amongst the use of high resolution cameras and an Inertial measurement unit to compensate for movement of the 3D objects observed by the UAV and the motion of the drone itself.

    The fundamental model used to handle moving objects image quality in this project is the CNN (Convolutional Neutral Network) algorithm. This is done by implementing four key steps which includes: Optical flow, motion blur removal, frame interpolation and data argumentation.

    2. The RL (Reinforcement learning ) algorithm is used to guide the navigation of the UAV in this project because RL algorithm can adapt to changing environments and tasks since it can be easily retrained to perform a new task in a new environment.

    3. The problem of poor or no cellular connectivity in rural areas can be addressed by the use of LoRa (Long range Radio) mesh network. Since LoRa can be used to create wireless mesh network that can provide connectivity over a wide area by connecting multiple nodes together.
    In addition to wide area / long range connectivity LoRa has an additional advantage of low- power consumption and low latency, these attributes make LoRa mesh network suitable for the project.

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