The future of UAS: standards, regulations, and operational experiences [workshop report]

This paper presents the outcomes of "The Future of UAS: Standards, Regulations and Operational Experiences" workshop, held on the 7th and 8th of December, 2006 in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. The goal of the workshop was to identify recent international activities in the Unmanned Airborne Systems (UAS) airspace integration problem. The workshop attracted a broad cross-section of the UAS community, including: airspace and safety regulators, developers, operators and researchers. The three themes of discussion were: progress in the development of standards and regulations, lessons learnt from recent operations, and advances in new technologies. This paper summarises the activities of the workshop and explores the important outcomes and trends as perceived by the authors

Assessing UAM emergency procedures in existing or new heliports

With the rising interest from big investors and manufacturers in UAM solutions, many vehicle prototypes and ground infrastructure designs are beginning to appear and being tested in real-world scenarios. This mode of air transportation could be a game-changer if the different milestones are achieved. While there are many challenges to be covered, from noise pollution to airspace management, safety is probably one of the main elements to be assessed. And while much effort has been given into designing and promoting UAM vehicles, little research has been published or conducted about safety considerations. This study provides with a discussion on different findings related to safety based on a root cause analysis of reported and documented helicopter accidents involving similar environments and conditions to those UAM will face. By assessing these hazards in similar VTOL aircraft such as helicopters, an extrapolation to UAM vehicles is made for different types of vehicles, depending on their characteristics and performance capabilities observed in various prototypes. The analysis is divided in two main parts. The first part focuses on the different occurrences involved in the accidents, following the CICTT standard definitions for reporting aviation accidents and incidents. The second part goes deeper and analyses the causes involved that lead to those occurrences, and how these could apply to UAM vehicles. The discussion considers the identified hazards in different levels, depending on factors such as human presence and automation, and their impact on criticality, prevention and mitigation. The overall study provides with some guidelines on safety issues that are considered relevant for future research in the field of UAM, as well as for the future standardization of the necessary elements to implement and regulate these systems in urban centers

Study of operational requirements in hostile and congested areas with unmanned air vehicles (UAV/RPAS)

The target of this study is analyse the operational requirement of UAV/RPAS activities in special conditionsThis study analyses and determines the operational requirements for unmanned aerial vehicles and remotely piloted aircrafts when operating in congested and hostile areas. In order to do so, a study of present regulatory framework from different countries is done and proposals published by regulating authorities from Europe and America as well, concluding this initial approach to unmanned aerial vehicle’s regulations with a benchmark of best practices. Afterwards, a risk analysis and a safe study are done by identifying potential risks, taking into account all possible situations and scenarios that can be produced during an operation in a congested area. Once the risks are adequately identified, an evaluation of them is performed, obtaining as a result a safety level which is acceptable or unacceptable in order to ensure the integrity of people on ground, and consequently developing the operation or not. Finally, for those operations associated to a risk that result in an unacceptable safety level, mitigation measures are proposed to reduce the likelihood of hazard happening and the severity of the consequences. It may be noted that these mitigation measures consist in adding technology to unmanned aircraft systems and establishing operational procedures

Survey of Bayesian Networks Applications to Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles

This article reviews the applications of Bayesian Networks to Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles (IAV) from the decision making point of view, which represents the final step for fully Autonomous Vehicles (currently under discussion). Until now, when it comes making high level decisions for Autonomous Vehicles (AVs), humans have the last word. Based on the works cited in this article and analysis done here, the modules of a general decision making framework and its variables are inferred. Many efforts have been made in the labs showing Bayesian Networks as a promising computer model for decision making. Further research should go into the direction of testing Bayesian Network models in real situations. In addition to the applications, Bayesian Network fundamentals are introduced as elements to consider when developing IAVs with the potential of making high level judgement calls.Comment: 34 pages, 2 figures, 3 table

Aerospace medicine and biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes (supplement 320)

This bibliography lists 125 reports, articles and other documents introduced into the NASA Scientific and Technical Information System during January, 1989. Subject coverage includes: aerospace medicine and psychology, life support systems and controlled environments, safety equipment, exobiology and extraterrestrial life, and flight crew behavior and performance

Landing site reachability and decision making for UAS forced landings

After a huge amount of success within the military, the benefits of the use of unmanned aerial systems over manned aircraft is obvious. They are becoming cheaper and their functions advancing to such a point that there is now a large drive for their use by civilian operators. However there are a number of significant challenges that are slowing their inevitable integration into the national airspace systems of countries. A large array of emergency situations will need to be dealt with autonomously by contingency management systems to prevent potentially deadly incidences. One such emergency situation that will need autonomous intervention, is the total loss of thrust from engine failure. The complex multi faceted task of landing the stricken aircraft at a potentially unprepared site is called a forced landing. This thesis presents methods to address a number of critical parts of a forced landing system for use by an unmanned aerial system. In order for an emergency landing site to be considered, it needs to be within glide range. In order to find a landing site s reachability from the point of engine failure the aircraft s glide performance and a glide path must be known. A method by which to calculate the glide performance, both from aircraft parameters or experiments is shown. These are based on a number of steady state assumptions to make them generic and quick to compute. Despite the assumptions, these are shown to have reasonable accuracy. A minimum height loss path to the landing site is defined, which takes account of a steady uniform wind. While this path is not the path to be flown it enables a measure of how reachable a landing site is, as any extra height the aircraft has once it gets to the site makes a site more reachable. It is shown that this method is fast enough to be run online and is generic enough for use on a range of aircraft. Based on identified factors that make a landing site more suitable, a multi criteria decision making Bayesian network is developed to decide upon which site a unmanned aircraft should land in. It can handle uncertainty and non-complete information while guaranteeing a fast reasonable decision, which is critical in this time sensitive situation. A high fidelity simulation environment and flight test platform are developed in order to test the performance of the developed algorithms. The test environments developed enable rapid prototyping of algorithms not just within the scope of this thesis, but on a range of vehicle types. In simulation the minimum height loss paths show good accuracy, for two completely different types of aircraft. The decision making algorithms show that they are capable of being ran online in a flight test. They make a reasonable decision and are capable of quickly reacting to changing conditions, enabling redirection to a more suitable landing site

Airspace Integration of New Entrants and Safety Risk Management Models

In recent years, the demand for airspace access of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) increased significantly and is continuously increasing for different altitude-types UAS. A similar evolution is expected from Commercial Space Operations (CSO) in the next years. These aviation/aerospace systems will need to be seamlessly integrated into the National Airspace System (NAS), at their operational altitude levels, and accounted for from all perspectives, including proactively addressing their safety hazards. This thesis captures the requirements for the new entrants’ integration, and then identifies and analyzes the safety risks added to the NAS operations by its new entrants, the future omnipresent UAS on different NAS levels, and the coming CSO age. Methodologies such as Functional Hazard Analysis, Subsystem and System Hazard Analysis, and Safety Risk Management are explored and integrated into the airspace new entrants’ framework and models. In addition, techniques such as state-machine modeling and simulation are used on an identified use case of UAS operations in crowded airspace

Aerial Vehicles

This book contains 35 chapters written by experts in developing techniques for making aerial vehicles more intelligent, more reliable, more flexible in use, and safer in operation.It will also serve as an inspiration for further improvement of the design and application of aeral vehicles. The advanced techniques and research described here may also be applicable to other high-tech areas such as robotics, avionics, vetronics, and space

Assessing the airport facilities in the context of UAM operations

UAM mobility is deemed as a paradigm shift in passenger transport mode for intra- and inter-urban transport. This concept is supported by the appearance of new types of aircraft with the capability of vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) and the use of electric propulsion and energy storage. Current VTOL vehicle prototypes vary substantially in configuration and design, resulting in different UAM missions and concepts of operations. Although still in the so-called innovation trigger phase, growing interest from large investors and existing (NASA) and emerging (Lilium) companies implies the expectation of some of these VTOL aircraft to end up being pilotless, autonomous aircraft designed for between one and five passengers on board. While most of the UAM passenger-related service will require dedicated VTOL ground infrastructure for takeoff and landing (often referred as vertiports), some of the operational concepts contemplate integrating these vehicles into existing airports. This refers particularly to the UAM mission which aims to connect the city center (or suburb) with the airport. However, this process is not straightforward, as it requires a thorough evaluation of different operational and safety aspects to allow the smooth operation of these new vehicles given their distinctive characteristics. Furthermore, to accommodate these types of vehicles and provide a satisfactory level of service to all stakeholders (i.e., airlines), airports will need to acquire adequate facilities and learn to manage these new operations alongside conventional aviation. This project aims to investigate the need for new airport facilities in the light of potential integration of VTOL vehicles. With their new autonomy features, some of the airside facilities need to be radically upgraded to allow safe integration into the current airport system. To do this, this analysis is divided into two parts. The first part is oriented to the description and analysis of the different models and configurations of VTOL aircraft that can be found nowadays together with the nature of the missions that can be carried out. The second part of the study introduces a background and an initial approach to the integration of UAM services in the airport environment to finish by analysing two hypothetical application scenarios to reality with their corresponding identification of the new and existing facilities necessary to accommodate these new operations concepts.Objectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::9 - Indústria, Innovació i InfraestructuraObjectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::11 - Ciutats i Comunitats Sostenible

Autonomous terminal area operations for unmanned aerial systems

After many years of successful operation in military domains, Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs) are generating significant interest amongst civilian operators in sectors such as law enforcement, search and rescue, aerial photography and mapping. To maximise the benefits brought by UASs to sectors such as these, a high level of autonomy is desirable to reduce the need for highly skilled operators. Highly autonomous UASs require a high level of situation awareness in order to make appropriate decisions. This is of particular importance to civilian UASs where transparency and equivalence of operation to current manned aircraft is a requirement, particularly in the terminal area immediately surrounding an airfield. This thesis presents an artificial situation awareness system for an autonomous UAS capable of comprehending both the current continuous and discrete states of traffic vehicles. This estimate forms the basis of the projection element of situation awareness, predicting the future states of traffic. Projection is subject to a large degree of uncertainty in both continuous state variables and in the execution of intent information by the pilot. Both of these sources of uncertainty are captured to fully quantify the future positions of traffic. Based upon the projection of future traffic positions a self separation system is designed which allows an UAS to quantify its separation to traffic vehicles up to some future time and manoeuvre appropriately to minimise the potential for conflict. A high fidelity simulation environment has been developed to test the performance of the artificial situation awareness and self separation system. The system has demonstrated good performance under all situations, with an equivalent level of safety to that of a human pilot