Preliminary study and design of the avionics system for an eVTOL aircraft.

The project consists of the study, creation, implementation, and development of the avionics system of an electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing (eVTOL) airplane for an ongoing project from the company ONAEROSPACE. The plane is intended to be for 7 passengers and 1 pilot, with a maximum range of 1000+ km. The fuselage will be formed of carbon fiber composite to reduce weight and it will use electric motors powered by batteries. The avionics system will provide the aircraft with communication and navigation systems, an autonomous Take-Off (T/O) and landing system, as well as the development of cockpit management systems. This document is divided into two parts. The first part begins with the study of all the necessary tools for communication and navigation systems. That means all compulsory antennas and sensors to obtain information about the surroundings (weather, obstacles, other planes¿). The intern communication network to send data from these sensors and antennas to main flight management systems is also studied in this first part. The second part of the project is dedicated to cabin cockpit systems and the study for the future development of autonomous systems. The cabin will have a full-glass cockpit, with touchable screens and an intelligent voice assistant. It will be very ergonomic and simple, with a lot of space in the cabin. In order to have an idea of the cost of the implementation of all the systems for the aircraft, a weight and cost estimation analysis are done at the end of each section. The last part of the project consists of the study of the design of a virtual intelligent voice assistant and the implementation of autonomous systems. Nowadays, the virtual intelligent voice assistant is an artificial intelligence system that works as a pilot monitoring system which assists the pilot in order to decrease the pilot¿s workload. The future idea is that the pilot could tell commands to the voice assistant and do nothing with the hands, just control that everything works correctly. Regarding the autonomous system, the conclusion is that with the existent technology is not possible today. Nevertheless, in the future, when fully autonomous aircraft are possible, the idea is that although being fully autonomous, the pilot can take the control of the aircraft at any moment.OutgoingObjectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::9 - Indústria, Innovació i InfraestructuraObjectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::11 - Ciutats i Comunitats Sostenible

Mapping and classification of ecologically sensitive marine habitats using unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) imagery and object-based image analysis (OBIA)

Nowadays, emerging technologies, such as long-range transmitters, increasingly miniaturized components for positioning, and enhanced imaging sensors, have led to an upsurge in the availability of new ecological applications for remote sensing based on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), sometimes referred to as “drones”. In fact, structure-from-motion (SfM) photogrammetry coupled with imagery acquired by UAVs offers a rapid and inexpensive tool to produce high-resolution orthomosaics, giving ecologists a new way for responsive, timely, and cost-effective monitoring of ecological processes. Here, we adopted a lightweight quadcopter as an aerial survey tool and object-based image analysis (OBIA) workflow to demonstrate the strength of such methods in producing very high spatial resolution maps of sensitive marine habitats. Therefore, three different coastal environments were mapped using the autonomous flight capability of a lightweight UAV equipped with a fully stabilized consumer-grade RGB digital camera. In particular we investigated a Posidonia oceanica seagrass meadow, a rocky coast with nurseries for juvenile fish, and two sandy areas showing biogenic reefs of Sabelleria alveolata. We adopted, for the first time, UAV-based raster thematic maps of these key coastal habitats, produced after OBIA classification, as a new method for fine-scale, low-cost, and time saving characterization of sensitive marine environments which may lead to a more effective and efficient monitoring and management of natural resource

On Small Satellites for Oceanography: A Survey

The recent explosive growth of small satellite operations driven primarily from an academic or pedagogical need, has demonstrated the viability of commercial-off-the-shelf technologies in space. They have also leveraged and shown the need for development of compatible sensors primarily aimed for Earth observation tasks including monitoring terrestrial domains, communications and engineering tests. However, one domain that these platforms have not yet made substantial inroads into, is in the ocean sciences. Remote sensing has long been within the repertoire of tools for oceanographers to study dynamic large scale physical phenomena, such as gyres and fronts, bio-geochemical process transport, primary productivity and process studies in the coastal ocean. We argue that the time has come for micro and nano satellites (with mass smaller than 100 kg and 2 to 3 year development times) designed, built, tested and flown by academic departments, for coordinated observations with robotic assets in situ. We do so primarily by surveying SmallSat missions oriented towards ocean observations in the recent past, and in doing so, we update the current knowledge about what is feasible in the rapidly evolving field of platforms and sensors for this domain. We conclude by proposing a set of candidate ocean observing missions with an emphasis on radar-based observations, with a focus on Synthetic Aperture Radar.Comment: 63 pages, 4 figures, 8 table

Reference Model for Interoperability of Autonomous Systems

This thesis proposes a reference model to describe the components of an Un-manned Air, Ground, Surface, or Underwater System (UxS), and the use of a single Interoperability Building Block to command, control, and get feedback from such vehicles. The importance and advantages of such a reference model, with a standard nomenclature and taxonomy, is shown. We overview the concepts of interoperability and some efforts to achieve common refer-ence models in other areas. We then present an overview of existing un-manned systems, their history, characteristics, classification, and missions. The concept of Interoperability Building Blocks (IBB) is introduced to describe standards, protocols, data models, and frameworks, and a large set of these are analyzed. A new and powerful reference model for UxS, named RAMP, is proposed, that describes the various components that a UxS may have. It is a hierarchical model with four levels, that describes the vehicle components, the datalink, and the ground segment. The reference model is validated by showing how it can be applied in various projects the author worked on. An example is given on how a single standard was capable of controlling a set of heterogeneous UAVs, USVs, and UGVs

Mock Certification Basis for an Unmanned Rotorcraft for Precision Agricultural Spraying

This technical report presents the results of a case study using a hazard-based approach to develop preliminary design and performance criteria for an unmanned agricultural rotorcraft requiring airworthiness certification. This case study is one of the first in the public domain to examine design and performance criteria for an unmanned aircraft system (UAS) in tandem with its concept of operations. The case study results are intended to support development of airworthiness standards that could form a minimum safety baseline for midsize unmanned rotorcraft performing precision agricultural spraying operations under beyond visual line-of-sight conditions in a rural environment. This study investigates the applicability of current methods, processes, and standards for assuring airworthiness of conventionally piloted (manned) aircraft to assuring the airworthiness of UAS. The study started with the development of a detailed concept of operations for precision agricultural spraying with an unmanned rotorcraft (pp. 5-18). The concept of operations in conjunction with a specimen unmanned rotorcraft were used to develop an operational context and a list of relevant hazards (p. 22). Minimum design and performance requirements necessary to mitigate the hazards provide the foundation of a proposed (or mock) type certification basis. A type certification basis specifies the applicable standards an applicant must show compliance with to receive regulatory approval. A detailed analysis of the current airworthiness regulations for normal-category rotorcraft (14 Code of Federal Regulations, Part 27) was performed. Each Part 27 regulation was evaluated to determine whether it mitigated one of the relevant hazards for the specimen UAS. Those regulations that did were included in the initial core of the type certification basis (pp. 26-31) as written or with some simple modifications. Those regulations that did not mitigate a recognized hazard were excluded from the certification basis. The remaining regulations were applicable in intent, but the text could not be easily tailored. Those regulations were addressed in separate issue papers. Exploiting established regulations avoids the difficult task of generating and interpreting novel requirements, through the use of acceptable, standardized language. The rationale for the disposition of the regulations was assessed and captured (pp. 58-115). The core basis was then augmented by generating additional requirements (pp. 38-47) to mitigate hazards for an unmanned sprayer that are not covered in Part 27

Vision based strategies for implementing Sense and Avoid capabilities onboard Unmanned Aerial Systems

Current research activities are worked out to develop fully autonomous unmanned platform systems, provided with Sense and Avoid technologies in order to achieve the access to the National Airspace System (NAS), flying with manned airplanes. The TECVOl project is set in this framework, aiming at developing an autonomous prototypal Unmanned Aerial Vehicle which performs Detect Sense and Avoid functionalities, by means of an integrated sensors package, composed by a pulsed radar and four electro-optical cameras, two visible and two Infra-Red. This project is carried out by the Italian Aerospace Research Center in collaboration with the Department of Aerospace Engineering of the University of Naples “Federico II”, which has been involved in the developing of the Obstacle Detection and IDentification system. Thus, this thesis concerns the image processing technique customized for the Sense and Avoid applications in the TECVOL project, where the EO system has an auxiliary role to radar, which is the main sensor. In particular, the panchromatic camera performs the aiding function of object detection, in order to increase accuracy and data rate performance of radar system. Therefore, the thesis describes the implemented steps to evaluate the most suitable panchromatic camera image processing technique for our applications, the test strategies adopted to study its performance and the analysis conducted to optimize it in terms of false alarms, missed detections and detection range. Finally, results from the tests will be explained, and they will demonstrate that the Electro-Optical sensor is beneficial to the overall Detect Sense and Avoid system; in fact it is able to improve upon it, in terms of object detection and tracking performance

Applications of unmanned aerial vehicles in cryosphere : Latest advances and prospects

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Open access data in polar and cryospheric remote sensing

This paper aims to introduce the main types and sources of remotely sensed data that are freely available and have cryospheric applications. We describe aerial and satellite photography, satellite-borne visible, near-infrared and thermal infrared sensors, synthetic aperture radar, passive microwave imagers and active microwave scatterometers. We consider the availability and practical utility of archival data, dating back in some cases to the 1920s for aerial photography and the 1960s for satellite imagery, the data that are being collected today and the prospects for future data collection; in all cases, with a focus on data that are openly accessible. Derived data products are increasingly available, and we give examples of such products of particular value in polar and cryospheric research. We also discuss the availability and applicability of free and, where possible, open-source software tools for reading and processing remotely sensed data. The paper concludes with a discussion of open data access within polar and cryospheric sciences, considering trends in data discoverability, access, sharing and use.A. Pope would like to acknowledge support from the Earth Observation Technology Cluster, a knowledge exchange project, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) under its Technology Clusters Programme, the U.S. National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program, Trinity College (Cambridge) and the Dartmouth Visiting Young Scientist program sponsored by the NASA New Hampshire Space Grant.This is the final published version. It's also available from MDPI at http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/6/7/6183