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Safety reporting has long been recognised as critical to reducing safety occurrences by identifying issues early enough that they can be remedied before an adverse outcome. This study examines safety occurrence reporting amongst a sample of 92 New Zealand civilian uncrewed aircraft users. An online survey was created to obtain the types of occurrences that these users have had, how (if at all) these are reported, and why participants did or did not report using particular systems. This study focussed on seven types of occurrences that have been highlighted by the Civil Aviation Authority of New Zealand as being reportable using a CA005RPAS form, the template for reporting to the authority for uncrewed aircraft occurrences. The number of each type of occurrence was recorded, as well as what percentage of occurrences were reported using a CA005RPAS form, an internal reporting system, or were non-reported. Qualitative questions were used to understand why participants did or did not report using particular systems. Categorical and numerical data were analysed using Chi-Squared Tests of Independence, Kruskal–Wallis H Tests, and Mann–Whitney U Tests. Qualitative data were analysed using thematic analysis. The findings reveal that 85.72% of reportable safety occurrences went unreported by pilots, with only 2.74% of occurrences being self-reported by pilots using a CA005RPAS form. The biggest reason for non-reporting was that the user did not perceive the occurrence as serious enough, with not being aware of reporting systems and not being legally required to report also being major themes. Significant differences were observed between user groups, providing policy implications to improve safety occurrence reporting, such as making reporting compulsory, setting minimum training standards, having an anonymous and non-punitive reporting system, and through working with member-based organisations.

Fil: Assumpção, João Paulo Franco. Universidad Estadual de Campinas. Facultad de Ingeniería Civil, Arquitectura y Urbanismo; Brasil. Fil: Cuperschmid, Ana Regina Mizrahy. Universidad Estadual de Campinas. Facultad de Ingeniería Civil, Arquitectura y Urbanismo; Brasil. En vista del difícil acceso a áreas remotas, edificios, sitios y sitios arqueológicos, las aeronaves no tripuladas (UA), aparecen como una alternativa menos invasiva para obtener información in loco. El uso de UAs ha sido recurrente en el área de Arquitectura, Ingeniería, Construcción y Operación (AECO) debido a la facilidad de uso y la posibilidad de integración con los más diversos sensores (cámaras, GPS, proximidad, etc.), brindando a los usuarios una nueva perspectiva del proyecto. Otra tecnología que se ha explorado en AECO es la Realidad Aumentada (AR), ya que permite la inserción de elementos virtuales en el entorno físico en tiempo real. Considerando las posibilidades de estas tecnologías, este artículo tiene como objetivo mapear investigaciones que buscan el uso simultáneo de UA y RA y discutir las oportunidades que esta asociación ofrece para AECO. Para el mapeo, se realizó una Revisión Sistemática. Solo se identificaron algunas investigaciones en el área de AECO, lo que indica un campo de conocimiento aún poco explorado. El aporte de esta investigación es investigar el uso de la RA junto con los UAS aplicados a AECO, destacando las brechas en el tema y señalando tendencias y oportunidades para los procesos de diseño, construcción, mantenimiento y operación de edificios. Considering the difficult access to remote areas, buildings, places and archaeological sites, unmanned aircrafts (AUs), also known as drones, emerge as a less invasive alternative to obtaining information from such sites. The employment of UAs has been recurrent in the field of Architecture, Engineering, Construction and Operation (AECO) due to ease of use, access to previously unreachable areas and the possibility of integration with the most diverse sensors (cameras, GPS, proximity, etc.), giving users a new perspective of the project. Another technology explored in AECO is Augmented Reality (AR) because it allows the insertion of virtual elements in the physical environment in real time. Considering the possibilities of these technologies, this article maps research that seeks the simultaneous use of UAs and AR and discuss the opportunities that this association offers for AECO. For mapping, a Systematic Literature Review was conducted. Only a few studies were identified in AECO, indicating a field of knowledge that should be explored. This research contribution is the investigation of the emerging research about AR with UAS applied to AECO, highlighting the gaps in the theme and the opportunities for building design, construction, maintenance, and operation processes. Tendo em vista o difícil acesso a áreas remotas, construções, locais e sítios arqueológicos, as aeronaves não tripuladas (unmanned aircrafts, UAs), também conhecidas como drones, surgem como uma alternativa menos invasiva para obter informações de tais locais. A utilização de UAs tem sido recorrente na área de Arquitetura, Engenharia, Construção e Operação (AECO) devido a facilidade de uso e a possibilidade de integração com os mais diversos sensores (câmeras, GPS, proximidade etc.), dando aos usuários uma nova perspectiva do projeto. Outra tecnologia que tem sido explorada em AECO é a Realidade Aumentada (RA), pois possibilita a inserção de elementos virtuais no ambiente físico em tempo real. Considerando as possibilidades dessas tecnologias, este artigo tem por objetivo mapear as pesquisas que buscam o uso simultâneo de UAs e RA e discutir as oportunidades que esta associação oferece para AECO. Para o mapeamento, foi realizada uma Revisão Sistemática da Literatura (RSL). Foram identificadas somente algumas pesquisas na área de AECO, indicando um campo de conhecimento ainda pouco explorado. A contribuição desta pesquisa está em investigar a utilização de RA juntamente com UAS aplicada à AECO, evidenciando as lacunas do tema e apontando as tendências e oportunidades para os processos de projeto, construção, manutenção e operação de edificações.

In the transition from crewed to uncrewed aircraft, naval aviation has focused on the technical instead of the human aspects of the change. The transition challenges the traditional pilot identity, based on sitting in a cockpit and physically operating an aircraft, because pilots of uncrewed aircraft control them remotely or manage the battlefield rather than the cockpit. This thesis uses identity theory and social identity theory to analyze similar cultural factors in the Navy’s transition from sail-to-steam power in the 1800s to identify how and why some line officers resisted and rejected steam technology, inhibiting the transition. In this case study, naval leadership encouraged resistance through orders mandating sail over steam power and failed to direct the needed change in line officer identity when engineers took away propulsion control and replaced the symbols associated with the line officer identity. To avoid repeating this failure, the Navy must oversee the pilot identity transition in order to leverage the full potential of both technology and humans. Instead of creating division, naval leaders should emphasize unity by creating an inclusive pilot identity, using terms that do not focus on human occupants when referring to aircraft categories, and creating viable career paths for all. Outstanding Thesis Ensign, United States Navy Approved for public release. Distribution is unlimited.

Due to the limitation imposed by hardware and form factor considerations, multirotor unmanned aircraft (drones) are unable to conduct preflight physical checks on their own capacity. Critical safety checks involve detecting various anomalies such as imbalanced payload, damaged propellers, mulfunctioning motors and poorly calibrated compass, etc. Human efforts are currently required for performing such tasks, which impedes large-scale deployments of drones and increases the operational costs. In this work, we propose a weight-measuring landing platform along with a set of statistical inference algorithms aimed at performing safety checks for any multicopter aircraft that lands on the platform. We develop a nonconvex nonlinear least squares model for estimating the center of gravity and orientation of the aircraft, and derive a recursive formula for calculating the optimal solution. In numeric experiments, our analytical solution method has been able to find the global solution orders-of-magnitude faster than a global optimization solver. We have conducted real-system tests on a quadcopter drone deliberately configured to carry misplaced payload, and to use damaged propellers. Experiment results show that the platform is able to detect and profile these common safety issues with high accuracy.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been developed for military purposes and are therefore particularly advanced and developed in military aviation. Under the circumstances, UAVs and drones are used these days not only in the military but also in the civilian industry. Based on the chosen research objective and problems the questionnaire survey method was selected. There was collected primary data which was processed by software using a computer-based statistical analysis program. Next analysis, which solve in part about goals and objectives was the experts’ evaluation method based on experts’ surveyed sample analysis. The Kendall’s coefficient of concordance (W) was selected for experts’ data analysis. The statistical software package SPSS version 26 was used for the collected experts’ data analysis and for the hierarchical clustering analysis as well [11].

The article analyzes the activities of the Commonwealth of Independent States as an organization of regional security. Despite the fact that after the collapse of the Soviet Union about 30 years have passed, the ruling elites of the New Independent States continue to search for their own vectors of foreign and defense policy. The author believes that in the pursuit of the many attributes of independence, these elites still have not defined clear boundaries for themselves where they can sacrifice national sovereignty for the benefit of their own development, but in close cooperation with their neighbors. The CIS, as an umbrella association of the post-Soviet republics, continues to be a platform for dialogue between the leaders of the new generation, not connected by the Soviet past. Their foreign policy is dominated by pragmatism and multivectorness. Therefore, the absence of a rigid managerial dominance in the Commonwealth is for them the key to the success of this regional format. It seems that this means that, using the CIS as a convenient and non-binding stage for communication, the participating states will continue to search for themselves the most profitable areas of cooperation, even if through trial and error. In such a context, the main areas of cooperation will remain the fight against terrorism and organized crime, as well as the use of Russian experience in reflecting new challenges and threats.

With the expanding electrification in all sectors of transport, it is necessary to look for new efficient solutions for propulsion systems for use in air transport. One of the approaches can be the use of electric ducted fans (EDFs), especially in, but not limited to, the case of unmanned aerial vehicles with vertical takeoff and landing. This concept has been known for several decades but has been used very little and therefore has been almost unexplored. This opens up opportunities for investigating the performance characteristics, electrical consumption or efficient thrust vectoring of EDFs with respect to their design and operational use. The presented study therefore deals with the influence of the EDF design change on its performance characteristics. These design changes mainly concerned the geometry of the cowling, i.e., reduction and increase of outlet cross section, and arrangement of fans, i.e., one- and two-rotor specification. The comparison was based on measuring of vertical thrust and power consumption during static testing. The results showed that the increasing outlet is the most suitable construction for the generation of vertical thrust during static testing, considering the specifically used EDF construction arrangement. Based on the findings, it can also be concluded that EDFs are a suitable option for use in unmanned aircraft as a competition to other propulsion systems.

This paper investigates the risk quantification for Unmanned Aircraft (UA) in urban environments, focusing on the safety of ground people. An assessment methodology is proposed to quantify the flying risk, which indicates the ground fatalities resulted from different potential risk sources. With the knowledge of UA’s specifications and ground environments, the flying risk of the target UA flying in the target area could be evaluated from the combination of results from independent assessment procedures focusing on multiple potential risk sources with specific safety metrics. A study case to assess the flying risk of the Talon and the DJI Inspire 2 flying in one piece of the region in Chengdu is presented. From the assessment result, the airspace management strategies for both Talon and DJI Inspires 2 could be easily developed to guarantee the safety of ground people, therefore, this risk quantification method could be a general tool to support decision-making in safety work.

Tiesību zinātne Tiesību zinātne Law Science Law Science Maģistra darba mērķis ir padziļināti izpētīt esošo situāciju Valsts policijā bezpilota gaisa kuģu sistēmu jomā, kā arī potenciālās iespējas bezpilota gaisa kuģu izmantošanai policijas darbā, lai kompensētu resursu un darbinieku trūkumu. Darba gaitā tiek analizēts Eiropas Savienības tiesiskais regulējums, nacionālā līmeņa tiesiskais regulējums, kā arī nepilnības tiesiskajā regulējumā. Darbā tiek pētīts kādu pienesumu līdz šim Valsts policijas darbā ir devuši bezpilota gaisa kuģi, kādās operācijās tie tiek izmantoti, kā arī citu valstu pieredze šajā jomā. Darba laikā autors analizē bezpilota gaisa kuģu operāciju nianses, sākot no policijas darbinieku apmācību procesa, operāciju plānošanas, praktiskās operāciju izpildes un bezpilota gaisa kuģu lidojumā iesaistīto pušu lomu gaisa operācijās. Ņemot vērā, ka bezpilota gaisa kuģu sfēra ir relatīvi jauna, normatīvais regulējums arī mainās strauji un regulāri, lai neatpaliktu no bezpilota gaisa kuģu attīstības, līdz ar to autors analizēs normatīvos aktus, kuri reglamentē šo sfēru. Darbā autors padziļināti pēta valsts bezpilota gaisa kuģu lidojumus, jo tie savā izpildījumā atšķiras ne tikai pēc definīcijas, bet arī pēc praktiskā izpildījuma, no civilo bezpilota gaisa kuģu operācijām, jo policija veic lidojumus, lai pildītu savas likumā noteiktās funkcijas, līdz ar to arī taktiskais bezpilota gaisa kuģu pielietojums ir būtiski atšķirīgs no civilās nozares. Ņemot vērā to, ka aktuāla problēma ir bezpilota gaisa kuģu pārkāpumu fiksēšana, autors pēta esošo situāciju un iespējas pārkāpumu fiksēšanas jomā, kā arī potenciālās pārkāpumu fiksēšanas iespējas un pretdarbošanos nelegāliem bezpilota gaisa kuģu lidojumiem. Nobeigumā tiek atspoguļotas pastāvošās problēmas bezpilota gaisa kuģu izmantošanai Valsts policijā, izdarīti secinājumi un tiek sniegti priekšlikumi. Darba ietvaros pētītās informācijas analīzes rezultātā iegūtie rezultāti tiks atspoguļoti pielikumos. The aim of the Master paper is to study in depth the current situation in the field of unmanned aircraft systems, as well as to realize the potential opportunities of the use of unmanned aircrafts in the police work to compensate the lack of resources and employees in the State Police of Latvia. The research examines the regulatory framework of the European Union and the Republic of Latvia, as well, the gaps in the legal framework are analysed. The research examines the contribution of unmanned aircrafts for the work of the State Police so far. It is studied in which operations they are used mostly, as well as the experience of other countries in this field is crystallized. Within the master paper, the author analyses the nuances of unmanned aircraft operations, starting from the training process of police officers, planning of the operations, practical execution of operations and the roles of the involved parties within the air operations of the unmanned aircrafts. Considering that, the field of unmanned aircrafts is relatively new, the regulatory framework changes rapidly and regularly, in order to keep up with the development of unmanned aircrafts, the author analyses the regulations that determine this field. In the paper, the author examines in depth the flights of unmanned aircrafts of state importance, as they differ in their performance, not only by the definition, but also in a practical execution, from the civilian unmanned aircraft operations. This is because the police conduct flights to fulfil their statutory functions, thus the tactical use of unmanned aircrafts is fundamentally different from the civil sector. The author examines the current situation and opportunities in the field of recording transgressions, as well as potential opportunities for recording transgressions and countermeasures against illegal flights of unmanned aircrafts, taking into account the fact that the recording of transgressions of unmanned aircrafts is a topical issue. Finally, the existing problems of the use of unmanned aircrafts in the State Police are reflected, conclusions are drawn and proposals are presented. The results, obtained within the analysis of the information studied as part of the work, are reflected in the appendices.

Введение. Анализ современных достижений науки и техники показывает активный рост интереса многих стран к разработке и применению в различных отраслях беспилотных летательных аппаратов. Промышленностью выпускается большое количество моделей различной конфигурации. В сельскохозяйственном производстве осваиваются самолётные и вертолётные типы летательных аппаратов с целью создания воздушных агророботов. Основной проблемой совершенствования агротехнологий является развитие многофункциональности и приспособленности воздушных агророботов к сельскохозяйственным животным с учётом их физиологических и этологических особенностей. Материалы и методы. С целью определения тенденций развития беспилотной авиации и анализа зон её применения в области точного сельского хозяйства проведён анализ возможности объединения аграрных знаний и научно-технических достижений в области промышленной роботизации. Методологической основой анализа является системнологический подход, имеющий универсальный и всеобъемлющий характер для выявления структурообразующих составляющих, принципов и технологий их взаимодействия, проявляющихся в целеадаптивных, самоорганизующихся биотехнических системах аграрного производства. Результаты. Системотехнические исследования позволили определить новые технико-технологические перспективы совершенствования управления животными на основе развития поисково-распознавательных и исполнительно-преобразовательных функций беспилотных летательных аппаратов. В статье предложены и рассмотрены модели и проекты развития многофункционального и оперативного аэрокоптерного управления животными в пастбищных условиях. Обсуждение. Развитие специализированных поисково-преобразовательных функций аэрокоптеров для эффективного применения в сельском хозяйстве требует: модернизации летательных аппаратов для адаптации в технологиях производства продукции животноводства, совершенствования лётно-посадочных, поисково-распознавательных и манипуляционно-роботизированных характеристик, уникального изготовления и апробации усовершенствованных аппаратов в условиях аграрного производства. Заключение. Реализация проекта более широкого применения в отраслях аграрного производства многофункциональных, аграрно-адаптированных беспилотных летательных аппаратов, благодаря более точному, оперативному и ресурсосберегающему выполнению агротехнологических операций, позволит обеспечивать сокращение потерь агропродукции, прирост продуктивности и высокое качество., Introduction. The analysis of modern achievements of science and technology shows an active growth in the interest of many countries in the development and application of unmanned aerial vehicles in various industries. The industry produces a large number of models of various configurations. In agricultural production, aircraft and helicopter types of aircraft are being mastered in order to create aerial agrobots. The main problem of improving agricultural technologies is the development of multifunctionality and adaptability of aerial agrobots to farm animals, taking into account their physiological and ethological characteristics. Materials and methods. In order to determine the trends in the development of unmanned aircraft and analyze the areas of its application in the field of precision agriculture, an analysis of the possibility of combining agricultural knowledge and scientific and technical achievements in the field of industrial robotics was carried out. The methodological basis of the analysis is a systemological approach, which has a universal and comprehensive character for the phenomenon of structure-forming components, principles and technologies of their interaction, manifested in goal-adaptive, self-organizing biotechnical systems of agricultural production. Results. System engineering studies have made it possible to identify new technical and technological prospects for improving animal management based on the development of search-recognition and executive-transformative functions of unmanned aerial vehicles. The article proposes and discusses models and projects for the development of multifunctional and operational aerocopter control of livestock in pasture conditions. Discussion. The development of specialized search and conversion functions of aerocopters for effective use in agriculture requires: modernization of aircraft for adaptation to livestock production technologies, improvement of flight-landing, search-recognition and manipulation-robotic characteristics, unique manufacturing and testing of improved devices in conditions of agricultural production. Conclusion. The implementation of the project, the wider use of multi-functional, agro-adapted unmanned aerial vehicles in the agricultural production sectors, thanks to more accurate, operational and resource-saving implementation of agrotechnological operations, will ensure a reduction in losses of agricultural products, an increase in productivity and high quality.

This paper introduces a kinodynamic motion planning algorithm for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), called MP-RRT#. MP-RRT# joins the potentialities of RRT# with a strategy based on Model Predictive Control to efficiently solve motion planning problems under differential constraints. Similar to other RRT-based algorithms, MP-RRT# explores the map constructing an asymptotically optimal graph. In each iteration the graph is extended with a new vertex in the reference state of the UAS. Then, a forward simulation is performed using a Model Predictive Control strategy to evaluate the motion between two adjacent vertices, and a trajectory in the state space is computed. As a result, the MP-RRT# algorithm eventually generates a feasible trajectory for the UAS satisfying dynamic constraints. Simulation results obtained with a simulated drone controlled with the PX4 autopilot corroborate the validity of the MP-RRT# approach.

Regular aviation does usually not utilize the very low level airspace below 150 m. Even so, this altitude range cannot be exclusively reserved for the operation of unmanned aircraft. Therefore, measures have to be implemented to avoid mid-air collisions, especially with manned aviation. Primarily, the mid-air collision risk is supposed to be reduced on a strategic level preflight by thorough flight route planning and making use of advanced unmanned aircraft system traffic management concepts. Besides, the residual mid-air collision risk is supposed to be reduced on a tactical level through the use of detect and avoid systems, which support remote pilots especially during flights beyond visual line of sight. However, an accepted technical solution for unmanned aircraft does not exist at the moment. On that account, the contribution of this chapter is three-fold. First, we identify suitable detect and avoid system architectures. Second, we review suitable cooperative sensor technologies. Third, we determine the minimum required sensor range in simulations. As a result, we propose a solution for operation in European airspace that is already available: FLARM cooperative sensors onboard the UA surveille the surrounding airspace and the remote pilot tracks intruders and commands avoidance maneuvers.

Registration of unmanned aircraft is a common policy around the world and forms part of the International Civil Aviation Organisation’s model regulations for unmanned aircraft. This study conducts a review of the various registration policies that have been implemented amongst advanced economies to find commonalities and differences. New Zealand is then used as a case study. The country does not currently have registration of unmanned aircraft; however, their Ministry of Transport has put forward the idea of implementing a registration scheme. As part of this case study, the ownership characteristics of 919 New Zealand unmanned aircraft users were collected using an online survey. The results highlight that personally owned aircraft tend to only be used by their owner, with the number of users being lower than the number of aircraft. For organisationally owned aircraft, there are multiple users per aircraft; however, these users tend to only be employees of the organisation. These findings suggest that for New Zealand, the best way to implement a registration scheme would be to register users and organisations rather than individual aircraft. While specific to New Zealand, these findings also prompt the need for future research worldwide to see whether registration schemes reconcile with ownership data.

In the next years, the unmanned air business is expected to have an average annual growth rate of 14.5 per cent. Last-mile delivery, inspection works and security tasks are the most expected missions that those unmanned aircraft (UA) will execute. Most of these missions are well suited for multi-copters: small airframes with vertical take-off and landing capabilities. Large fleets of UA will be managed by new aerial logistic centers where flight plans will be created and monitored, the payload will be prepared, and fast battery replacement will allow continuous flights to obtain maximum benefit. Beyond visual line-of-sight capabilities is a must for those logistic center businesses. Anticipating the scalability of unmanned aircraft growth is the aim of this paper. For this, a simulation tool has been developed which generates unmanned traffic flights from completely parameterized inputs: the geographic area and the type and number of operations, aircraft and operators. For this paper, the tested scenario is a logistics industrial polygon with increasing delivery traffic, the Martorell industrial area (5.8 km2). Flights have a random altitude from 80 m to 120 m. En- route phases have some slight turns to make them more realistic. The time of departure follows a Box-Muller algorithm during the declared business hours, centered in the peak declared hour. This work was funded by the Ministry of Economy, Industry, and Competitiveness of Spain under GrantNumber TRA2016-77012-R

Orientadores: Hugo Enrique Hernández Figueroa, Luciano Prado de Oliveira Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia Elétrica e de Computação Resumo: Imageamento por radar de abertura sintética (SAR) tem sido usado pelas últimas décadas em aplicações civis e militares, tais como reconhecimento de terreno, vigilância, identificação de alvos, cartografia, agricultura, avaliação de desastres naturais, entre outras. Sistemas SAR são geralmente empregados a bordo de satélites e aviões, porém este tipo de operação não é acessível devido aos altos custos envolvidos. Recentemente, pequenos drones tem se tornado bastante populares, especialmente para o propósito de fotografia aérea, porém a sua grande disponibilidade e capacidade de carregar pequenas cargas úteis (geralmente câmeras) levantou a possibilidade de usá-los para imageamento SAR. Este trabalho apresenta três antenas projetadas para serem utilizadas em um sistema de radar de abertura sintética que opera embarcado em um drone Abstract: Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging has been in use for the past decades in military and civil applications such as reconnaissance, surveillance, target identification, cartography, agriculture, natural disaster assessment and more. SAR systems are usually embedded on satellites and airplanes, but this type of operation is not accessible due to the high costs involved. Recently, small drones are becoming very popular, specially for aerial photography purposes, but their widespread availability and ability to carry small payloads (usually cameras) raised the possibility to use them for SAR imaging. This work presents three antennas designed to be used in a synthetic aperture radar system that operates on board a drone Mestrado Telecomunicações e Telemática Mestre em Engenharia Elétrica CNPQ 130070/2016-5

Unmanned aircrafts (UA) usually fly below 500 ft to be segregated from manned aircraft. However, while general aviation (GA) usually do fly above 500 ft in areas where UA are allowed to operate, GA will at times also fly below 500 ft. Consequently, there is a distinct risk of near‐miss encounters as well as actual midair collisions (MACs). This work presents a model for determining this risk based on physical parameters of the aircraft and actual figures for the numbers of GA in a given airspace, as well as the probability of having GA below 500 ft. The aim is to achieve a prediction with a precision better than one order of magnitude relative to the true MAC rate value. The model is applied to Danish airspace and the MAC rate for unmitigated operations of UA is found to be approximately 10−6 MAC per flight hour. The model is particularly well suited for beyond visual line‐of‐sight operations, and is useful for UA operators for conducting risk assessment of planned operations as well as for regulators for determining appropriate operational requirements.

A unique drone-based system for underwater mapping (bathymetry) was developed at the University of Florida. The system, called the “Bathy-drone”, comprises a drone that drags, via a tether, a small vessel on the water surface in a raster pattern. The vessel is equipped with a recreational commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) sonar unit that has down-scan, side-scan, and chirp capabilities and logs GPS-referenced sonar data onboard or transmitted in real time with a telemetry link. Data can then be retrieved post mission and plotted in various ways. The system provides both isobaths and contours of bottom hardness. Extensive testing of the system was conducted on a 5 acre pond located at the University of Florida Plant Science and Education Unit in Citra, FL. Prior to performing scans of the pond, ground-truth data were acquired with an RTK GNSS unit on a pole to precisely measure the location of the bottom at over 300 locations. An assessment of the accuracy and resolution of the system was performed by comparison to the ground-truth data. The pond ground truth had an average depth of 2.30 m while the Bathy-drone measured an average 21.6 cm deeper than the ground truth, repeatable to within 2.6 cm. The results justify integration of RTK and IMU corrections. During testing, it was found that there are numerous advantages of the Bathy-drone system compared to conventional methods including ease of implementation and the ability to initiate surveys from the land by flying the system to the water or placing the platform in the water. The system is also inexpensive, lightweight, and low-volume, thus making transport convenient. The Bathy-drone can collect data at speeds of 0–24 km/h (0–15 mph) and, thus, can be used in waters with swift currents. Additionally, there are no propellers or control surfaces underwater; hence, the vessel does not tend to snag on floating vegetation and can be dragged over sandbars. An area of more than 10 acres was surveyed using the Bathy-drone in one battery charge and in less than 25 min.

This paper evaluates the performance and practical challenges associated with fabricating and flight testing an unmanned aircraft powered by a turboelectric system based on a 7 kW turbine engine. Emerging hybrid gas-electric aircraft concepts have been the subject of numerous design studies and analytical evaluations; however, there is a critical need to identify and assess practical issues associated with integrating a hybrid turboelectric power system into an aircraft. The purpose of this study, relevant to emerging hybrid-powered aircraft, is to evaluate and retrofit a prototype turboelectric power system to an existing 391 N gross take-off weight unmanned airframe. The representative 7 kW turboelectric system was installed to identify challenges and to formulate data-driven recommendations for general application to urban air mobility. This work addresses performance, power and thermal management, vibration, and acoustic emissions. Results include a weight breakdown with the turboelectric system making up 21% of the total aircraft weight, in-flight voltage and current measurements with maximum loads observed during a dive pull-out, temperature measurements, accelerometer measurements, and far field sound pressure level measurements. Practical recommendations from this study are applicable to power system reliability, electronic component selection, cooling requirements, and peak power behavior, informing the design of future hybrid gas–electric aircraft.

Background. The object of the study is to ensure the safety of the flight of unmanned aircraft as part of a heterogeneous group in the emergency zone, designed for the localization and elimination of emergency situations. The subject of the study is the proposed zones, or areas of security, which are built in a basic coordinate system, the beginning of which is tied to a certain point in the emergency zone, around each unmanned aircraft or potentially dangerous object. The purpose of the work is to develop a concept of application (and recommendations for use), including the construction of zones or security areas around each unmanned aircraft and potentially dangerous objects, taking into account the relative position of these zones or security areas, the intersection of which is unacceptable during the flight of an unmanned aircraft, thereby ensuring the protection of an unmanned aircraft from collision with obstacles. Materials and methods. To describe the process of transition from local coordinate systems associated with a specific unmanned aircraft to the base coordinate system, homogeneous transformation matrices are used. The concept of security spheres, as well as adaptive security spheres, dynamic radii of adaptive security spheres is introduced. Results. An approach to ensuring the protection of unmanned aircraft moving as part of a heterogeneous group in an emergency zone from collisions with obstacles, including each other, is proposed. This approach can be used to organize the movement and interaction of objects operating as part of multi-agent systems. Conclusions. The methods used for the transition from local coordinate systems linked to a particular unmanned aircraft (UAV) to the basic coordinate system allow you to organize the movement of a heterogeneous group of UAVs in the emergency zone. The developed concept and recommendations for the construction of an emergency zone, zones, or security areas around each operating as part of a heterogeneous group of UAVs and around potentially dangerous objects, as well as for taking into account the mutual location of these zones, or security areas, protect each UAV from collisions with obstacles, and also increase the traffic safety of a heterogeneous group of UAVs as a whole.

Unmanned aircrafts are rapidly developing, and they are becoming more widespread. The number of unmanned aircraft users is increasing, and it is necessary to harmonise the existing legislation at the EU level and amend the regulatory framework accordingly. In accordance with the development of new solutions within the European Union, the Republic of Croatia amended the 2015 Ordinance on unmanned aircraft systems (Official Gazette, Nos. 49/2015 and 77/2015) in 2018 (Official Gazette, No. 104/2018). Although the Croatian Civil Aviation Agency stated that the main reason for drafting a new Ordinance was to adjust the national system to the future European Union system in order to facilitate the implementation of the new Regulation on unmanned aircraft operations after its entry into force, it is surprising that the Republic of Croatia decided to amend the Ordinance before the said Regulation was adopted, especially if we know that it takes several years to adopt the European Regulation. The use of unmanned aircraft systems will certainly increase. However, it should be emphasised that the use of unmanned aircrafts is not a game and that safety rules must be respected. We must commend adjustment of the legal framework aimed at improving the use of unmanned aircratfs. It remains to be seen what the EU will do, what the dynamics will be when we talk about the regulation of unmanned aircrafts and how the Member States will adapt.

One of the major challenges of conducting operations of unmanned aircraft, especially operations beyond visual line-of-sight (BVLOS), is to make a realistic and sufficiently detailed risk assessment. An important part of such an assessment is to identify the risk of fatalities, preferably in a quantitative way since this allows for comparison with manned aviation to determine whether an equivalent level of safety is achievable. This work presents a method for quantifying the probability of fatalities resulting from an uncontrolled descent of an unmanned aircraft conducting a BVLOS flight. The method is based on a standard stochastic model, and employs a parameterized high fidelity ground impact distribution model that accounts for both aircraft specifications, parameter uncertainties, and wind. The method also samples the flight path to create an almost continuous quantification of the risk as a function of mission flight time. The methodology is exemplified with a 180 km flight in Danish airspace with a Penguin C aircraft.

Coastal tidal marshes are essential ecosystems for both economic and ecological reasons. They necessitate regular monitoring as the effects of climate change begin to be manifested in changes to marsh vegetation healthiness. Small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS) build upon previously established remote sensing techniques to monitor a variety of vegetation health metrics, including biomass, with improved flexibility and affordability of data acquisition. The goal of this study was to establish the use of RGB-based vegetation indices for mapping and monitoring tidal marsh vegetation (i.e., Spartina alterniflora) biomass. Flights over tidal marsh study sites were conducted using a multi-spectral camera on a quadcopter sUAS near vegetation peak growth. A number of RGB indices were extracted to build a non-linear biomass model. A canopy height model was developed using sUAS-derived digital surface models and LiDAR-derived digital terrain models to assess its contribution to the biomass model. Results found that the distance-based RGB indices outperformed the regular radio-based indices in coastal marshes. The best-performing biomass models used the triangular greenness index (TGI; R2 = 0.39) and excess green index (ExG; R2 = 0.376). The estimated biomass revealed high biomass predictions at the fertilized marsh plots in the Long-Term Research in Environmental Biology (LTREB) project at the study site. The sUAS-extracted canopy height was not statistically significant in biomass estimation but showed similar explanatory power to other studies. Due to the lack of biomass samples in the inner estuary, the proposed biomass model in low marsh does not perform as well as the high marsh that is close to shore and accessible for biomass sampling. Further research of low marsh is required to better understand the best conditions for S. alterniflora biomass estimation using sUAS as an on-demand, personal remote sensing tool.

Today it is possible to buy small and cheap drones in toy stores, super markets, and on numerous online shops. Often, these drones are very light-weight and even though they are flown in back yards, sport fields, parking lots, and such places, they typically pose no lethal threat to people in the vicinity of the drone. Nonetheless, in many countries such drones are regulated by aviation rules that does not distinguish between these drones and the larger hobby or professional drones. Consequently such small drones are flow illegally. This has prompted the Danish Transportation Authority to suggest a category labeled ’Harmless’, which should be based on a mass threshold. To aid such a classification this work proposes a mass threshold of 250 grams, below which, we argue, it is reasonable to classify drones as ’harmless’ in the sense that the expected fatality rate is equivalent to that of manned aviation. This threshold is found by combining probabilities for crashing a drone, for impacting a person, and for the impacted person to sustain a fatal injury. Drone technology is still in its infancy and statistical basis for these probabilities is therefore scarce. As a consequence the probabilistic approach in this work is based a numerous assumptions, such as the reliability of drones, the average mass to speed ratio, and the severity of drone inflicted injuries.

The article presents the analyses of the flights carried out the by the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) named PW-ZOOM used to perform a photogrammetric mission and monitoring of fauna in Antarctic areas. The analyses focus on the deviations of the optical axis of the photo-camera which occurred during photogrammetric flights carried out on the same route but during several Antarctic expeditions performed in subsequent years (2014 and 2015). The results were subjected to correlation tests with weather conditions (wind speed and variability). The basis for these analyses are the data from the onboard signal recorder integrated with an autopilot.

В статье рассматривается необходимость внедрения цифровых интеллектуальных технологий в области управления и развития городскими территориями посредством создания интеллектуальной трехмерной информационной платформы на примере г. Тюмень. Приведено описание отечественного и зарубежного опыта по теме статьи, а также представлена предлагаемая технологическая схема реализации интеллектуальной платформы и ее основные характеристики. Внедрение цифровых интеллектуальных технологий в управление и развитие городских территорий обусловлено ускорением темпов строительства, возрастающей сложностью технологий застройки, подземной и надземной инфраструктур, увеличением числа операций с недвижимостью. Значительно расширяет возможности трехмерное отображение местности и расположенных на ней объектов. В качестве исходных данных для точного трехмерного моделирования городской территории предлагается использовать материалы аэрофотосъемки, полученные при помощи беспилотного воздушного судна. Информационное наполнение зависит от направления использования платформы. Для хранения геоданных, фотоснимков местности, необходимой документации предлагается использование облачных хранилищ, которые являются наиболее защищенными и позволяют обеспечивать высокую скорость доступа к информации по многокритериальному запросу. Предлагаемая технология формирования комплексной единой интеллектуальной информационной платформы хранения и обработки трехмерных моделей, позволит: хранить все геоданные и документацию о модели в едином хранилище данных, обладающем высокой производительностью доступа к данным; осуществлять многомерность запроса данных модели и построения модели по большому количеству критериев; формировать личный кабинет пользователя с учетом индивидуальных прав доступа к материалам и документам; оперативно обновлять информацию об изменениях параметров местности; осуществлять статистическую и аналитическую обработку данных с учетом всех изменений на территории. Разработка технологии ведется с использованием исходных материалов и данных применительно к г. Тюмень, но в тоже время является универсальной и может быть внедрена для иных населенных пунктов.

Unmanned Aircraft Systems have been recently gaining momentum due to their mission flexibility and low cost. Here, we present a novel framework to plan and execute safe flight missions for Unmanned Aerial Systems in urban areas. The proposed strategy consists of the definition of a risk-based map, constructed from different data sources, and a risk-aware path planning strategy. Simulation results corroborate the proposed approach.

The Dubins vehicle model, with its parameters radius of turn and flight path angle, is commonly used for modeling unmanned aircraft trajectories. While Dubins model path planning is state of the art, the reverse direction, extracting Dubins model information from unmanned aircraft trajectories is poorly addressed. This article presents a method to fit the Dubins model parameters radius of turn and flight path angle to streamed aircraft trajectory data in a two-phase approach. In the first step flight phases are detected. Within the second step the corresponding radii of turn and flight path angles are estimated. The method is applied on various flight trajectories of different unmanned aircraft. The evaluation further regards the algorithms run time and states the feasibility for online applications.

Unmanned Aircraft (UA) are expected to play are more and more important role in global aviation during the next years. Besides the “smart” onboard control equipment leading to a certain amount of autonomy of the vehicle, a reliable data link (“Command and Control”, C2-link) is a key enabler for UA. This C2 link is used to exchange information between the UA and the remote pilot, for example positioning information, telemetry data or flight trajectories, respectively. None of the currently available aeronautical communication standards can fulfil the requirements for such a multi-user, multi-point datalink in terms of reliability, flexibility, data integrity, robustness and latency. The German Aerospace Center (DLR) initiated the “C-Band Digital Aeronautical Communication System” (CDACS) project to develop a C-band data link for this purpose. Part of this project is a flight measurement campaign to evaluate initial CDACS waveform designs, besides performing radio channel measurements of the terrestrial ground-air channel in C-band. Detailed knowledge on the behavior of the physical communication channel is crucial for an optimal design of a new communication system. Therefore, it is necessary to perform C-band channel measurements (aka “channel sounding”) and use the collected information to develop a channel model. In turn, this channel model can be used to optimize and evaluate the CDACS waveform design in simulations. The bandwidth used for the C-band channel measurements of this campaign was 50MHz whereas the CDACS waveforms tested spanned a bandwidth of ~1.5MHz. Multiple flight routes and maneuvers are chosen to collect information on different flight scenarios, e. g. take-off and landing, hard banking and en-route. This paper gives a detailed description on how this measurement campaign is setup, what kinds of signals for channel sounding and CDACS waveform testing are transmitted and how the post processing of the data is performed. It will also present an outlook on how the results of the campaign will be used to enhance the initial CDACS design.

The high-power density and good scaling properties of electric motors enable new propulsion arrangements and aircraft configurations. This results in distributed propulsion systems allowing to make use of aerodynamic interaction effects between individual propellers and the wing of the aircraft, improving flight performance and thus reducing in-flight emissions. In order to systematically analyze these effects, an unmanned research platform was designed and built at the University of Stuttgart. As the aircraft is being used as a testbed for various flight performance studies in the field of distributed electric propulsion, a methodology for precise identification of its performance characteristics is required. One of the main challenges is the determination of the total drag of the aircraft to be able to identify an exact drag and lift polar in flight. For this purpose, an on-board measurement system was developed which allows for precise determination of the thrust of the aircraft which equals the total aerodynamic drag in steady, horizontal flight. The system has been tested and validated in flight using the unmanned free-flight test platform. The article provides an overview of the measuring system installed, discusses its functionality and shows results of the flight tests carried out., Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy on the basis of a decision by the German Bundestag

This paper presents an optical-aided navigation method for automatic flights where satellite navigation might be disturbed. The proposed solution follows common approaches where satellite position updates are replaced with measurements from environment sensors such as a camera, lidar or radar as required. The alternative positioning is determined by a localization and mapping (SLAM) algorithm that handles 2D feature inputs from monocular camera images as well as 3D inputs from camera images that are augmented by range measurements. The method requires neither known landmarks nor a globally flat terrain. Beside the visual SLAM algorithm, the paper describes how to generate 3D feature inputs from lidar and radar sources and how to benefit from both monocular triangulation and 3D features. Regarding state estimation, the approach decouples visual SLAM from the filter updates. This allows software and hardware separation, i.e. visual SLAM computations on powerful hardware while the main filter can be installed on real-time hardware with possible lower capabilities. The localization quality in case of satellite dropouts is tested with data sets from manned and unmanned flights with different sensors while keeping all parameters constant. The tests show the applicability of this method in flat and hilly terrain and with different path lengths from few hundred meters to many kilometers. The relative navigation achieves an accumulation error of 1–6 % of distance traveled depending on the flight scenario. In addition to the flights, the paper discusses flight profile limitations when optical navigation methods are used.

Currently, a large part of the forest roads that were built using the bituminous surface technology in the second half of the last century have been worn out. This means that forest owners and forest managers urgently need to determine the amount and extent of this damage and establish a suitable repair plan, which demands both time and staff. The aim of the study is to verify whether it is possible, and with what precision, to detect the damage of the wearing course by means of unmanned aerial systems, which would facilitate and accelerate this process and possibly make it cheaper. A 3D model of a forest road was created using photos of the current state of a damaged part of a forest road. The aerial photographs were taken by an unmanned aircraft. To verify the accuracy of the model, cross sections of the road surface were surveyed tachymetrically and compared with the cross sections created in the 3D model in ArcMap, from photogrammetric pointcloud using aerial photographs from the unmanned aircraft. The RMSE of the values of the control points in the 3D model cross sections compared to the values of the points in the tachymetric measurement of the cross sections reached to within 0.0198 m. The results of the tested road section showed that the unmanned aerial systems can be used to detect the forest road surface damage with the difference in accuracy being up to 2 cm compared with the accuracy of the current tachymetric methods. Based on the results we can conclude that the used method is appropriate for detailed monitoring of the condition of the asphalt wearing course of forest roads and allows for a precise and objective localization and quantification of damage.

With the development of modern technology use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is becoming increasingly popular in various fields of civil protection area from remote sensing territory to identifying dangerous toxic substances that help quickly assess the condition of a large area of the study. Although the development of UAVs in the world is continuously in high rate, the current state of "drones" development in Ukraine is characterized by underdeveloped capacity and lack of mass production, but high performance single samples. Considering a competitive UAV of Ukrainian production which is intended for use in the field of civil protection, it includes only one prototype – "Viper SM 3" drone models. Our study has held the evaluation of new tools of monitoring and control of emergencies, which used foreign models for predicting and identifying areas substances in accidents on chemically and radioactive hazardous objects. Then, analyzing the main characteristics of UAVs the range of applications and their main disadvantages were defined. Finally, we perform the comparative characteristics of domestic drone and their foreign counterparts. As a result of comparison we can see that the basic specifications UAV Ukrainian production is not inferior to their foreign counterparts. However, the production and development of this type of industry in Ukraine is stay at the level of individual employment of volunteers and private companies that see a promising and virtually untapped market "drones" in our country. This situation indicates that government is not interested in the development of this promising area of production and development of research in this area. And while the state does not take up the design and production of its own UAVs, their extensive use of our operational and rescue services in the field of civil protection is not possible.

In this paper, we introduce a fast and lightweight method based on several combined filters to detect and track an object in images recorded by a moving camera. Assuming we know nothing about the intruders shape, color or other geometric appearance, we focus with our work on Change detection in the image, caused by movement of the object against the background. The method is evaluated with Image data from experimental flights with two unmanned aircraft performing different flight maneuvers. The correctness of the intruder detection is evaluated by comparison with hand labeled ground truth from different sequences of the test flight. Additionally, we evaluate the performance of our implementation on architectures with low computational power with regard to a practical onboard solution for small unmanned aerial vehicels (UAV).

Small UAV are often not equipped to measure angle of attack and angle of sideslip, and are therefore not able to determine the local wind vector directly. Model-free wind estimators rely on comparing GPS speed and airspeed measured by a Pitot probe. We propose to enhance such estimators by including approximations of angle of attack and angle of sideslip as “pseudo-measurements”. Initial flight test results show significant improvements, with errors of the estimated wind in the order of 1 m/s.

This chapter describes unmanned aircraft with respect to autonomy and safety aspects of aerospace. The focus will be on unmanned aircraft systems, however most of the principles regarding safety and automation are valid for both, manned and unmanned aviation. As a means to assure safety for aircraft, safety assessments, development processes, and software standards have been established for manned aviation. In this context, design-time assurance of software will be discussed. Another key component of the safety concept for manned aviation is the onboard pilot. The pilot supervises and validates the system behavior and develops a gut feeling if the system is okay, due to his onboard presence. This is not possible for an unmanned aircraft. Human supervision will be remotely located. Therefore, an extensive discussion on runtime assurance and automated supervision will be a part of this work. Furthermore, with the growing degrees of automation and upcoming autonomy of the aircraft, one pilot might have to supervise more than one aircraft at the same time. Unmanned aircraft are expected to be integrated into civil airspace in the near future, possibly in very large quantities. The autonomy of these unmanned aircraft and the absence of a pilot onboard the aircraft is a source of concern. However, the automation and autonomy can also support safety. The interdependence between safety and autonomy will be discussed in this chapter. The challenge regarding unmanned aircraft is that the same level of safety can be maintained. In this context, this chapter will discuss the impact of new and upcoming regulations and standards for unmanned aircraft regarding a holistic approach to the assessment of risk and their impact on autonomy and safety.

This paper considers the problem of quantifying the vertical overlap probability or vertical collision risk associated with unmanned aircraft operations around aerodromes. The risk models combine real surveillance data and expectations on altitude keeping errors of both manned and unmanned aircraft with well-established collision modelling approaches used in manned aircraft separation standards development. To demonstrate the utility of the proposed vertical collision risk model, a series of investigations are conducted to quantify the vertical collision risk associated with approaching and departing aircraft and the relative impact of unmanned altitude keeping performance. Results demonstrate some shortfalls of current exclusion zones near aerodromes and the need to better understand unmanned navigational errors when considering future unmanned traffic management.

In the context of optical-aided navigation and visual Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM) for satellite-denied aircraft navigation, this paper extends the monocular SLAM approach by the use of multiple sensors with different viewing directions. Downward optical sensors see other movements than forward-looking cameras, hence it is straightforward to combine the benefits of both. This combination helps to estimate all the six motion components with increased robustness, yielding a more stable and accurate state estimation for optical-aided navigation solutions. The method is evaluated with aerial data from manned and unmanned flights. In the data analysis, a satellite navigation dropout is simulated, and the flight trajectory is then reconstructed just by the optical data. The method is tested in small-scale scenarios as well as in longer flights with several kilometers of flight range. The results show some increased performance of an additional forward camera in comparison to a setup with only downward sensors. It is proposed to use such multi-sensor configurations wherever motion estimation ambiguities with a single camera are probable, especially when larger distances have to be flown with optical navigation.

This thesis presents the development and implementation of a software framework for estimating the position of a drone during flight. This framework is based on an algorithm known as the Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF), a recursive method of estimating the state of a highly nonlinear system, such as an aircraft. In this thesis, we present a UKF formulation specially designed for a quadcopter carrying an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) and a downward-facing camera. The UKF fuses data from each of these sensors to track the position of the quadcopter over time. This work supports a number of similar efforts in the robotics and aerospace communities to navigate in GPS-denied environments with minimal hardware and minimal computational complexity. The software framework explored in this thesis provides a means for roboticists to easily implement similar UKF-based state estimators for a wide variety of systems, including surface vessels, undersea vehicles, and automobiles. We test the system's effectiveness by comparing its position estimates to those of a commercial motion capture system and then discuss possible applications. Master of Science

Current state-of-the-art vision-based sense and avoid systems based on morphological and hidden Markov model filtering require the manual selection of static (time-invariant) detection thresholds. Manually selecting suitable static detection thresholds is challenging (and currently requires highly trained operators) because it involves balancing trade-offs between detection and false alarm performance in different image sensing conditions. In this paper, we exploit recent work on the characterisation of vision-based aircraft detection problems in the sky-region to propose an adaptive threshold selection approach. Using data sets captured during flight experiments, we show that our proposed adaptive threshold approach can enable improved detection range performance compared to manually selected static thresholds.

The article relates to the question of unmanned aviation, and aims to develop the technology of preflight intellectual diagnostics of engines of unmanned aircraft. On the basis of mathematical tools of fuzzy logic and artificial neural networks the signals converted using the discrete Fourier or wavelet transformations make up an attribute vector of a diagnosed engine. On the basis of the attribute vectors we form the information standards, which are the averaged characteristic of the state of the object. After that, we adapt the structure of the fuzzy neural network, which based on the analysis of the engine state by comparing the current data with the data of acoustic and vibration certificates, indicates a fault in a particular engine mount. The promising area is the use of data of vibration and acoustic certificates to correct the readings of course magnetometric sensors of navigation system of the unmanned aircraft with the engine diagnosed.

Unmanned aircraft are complex cyber physical systems. As such, software is a vital part of the aircraft. The midterm perspective of safe integration of unmanned aircraft in our airspace requires such a software-driven system to be fail-safe. Today, all classes of unmanned aircraft heavily rely on software, especially since successively increasing degrees of autonomy have already been shown for onboard decision-making and automation of mission task elements. One important software component of an unmanned aircraft is its guidance software. Unlike an assistance system for supporting a human pilot on a manned aircraft, autonomous guidance software is supposed to allow for human independent but safe plan execution, in case the control link to the operator is interrupted. Thus, to ensure safety objectives are achieved without the conventional fall-back layer of the human pilot in the loop, such cases of lost data and controlling links require special attention. First, this chapter will discuss fail-safe systems implications for unmanned aircraft systems from a software requirements perspective. Second, we discuss software challenges and possibilities to achieve autonomy in flight from lessons learned with our flying rotorcraft research testbed. We analyze software in the loop tests mapped to an abstract set of orthogonal capabilities. Furthermore, we utilize formal requirement modeling and model checking techniques to complement traditional testing. As a result, we present a methodology and tools that are not constrained to the unmanned system at hand.

For flight automation tolerable to satellite navigation dropouts, this paper presents a simultaneous localization and mapping method based on radar altimeter measurements and monocular camera images. The novelty within mapping is the combination of radar distance and image triangulation. This approach verifies whether the radar measurement fits to a specific horizontal plane in the map, yielding the sub-set of image features that do most probably correspond with the radar measurement. With this map match of the radar altitude, ambiguities in the radar measurement can be resolved. Since unusable radar measurements are suppressed, this method is suitable for positioning in non-flat terrain, e.g. in mountain areas. For matched data, the method estimates a scale correction factor for the image projection rays in order to remove scale ambiguities of the monocular navigation. Together with mapping, vehicle localization is done which is essentially camera resectioning. Localization can be parameterized with the required number of degrees of freedom depending on the availability of additional position sensors. The incremental positioning is tested in kilometer-scale outdoor flights of a 30 kg unmanned airplane as well as in flights with a Cessna 172R equipped with camera and radar sensors. The tests show the benefits of the proposed method in flat and hilly terrain, and demonstrate reduction of accumulation errors down to 2–6% over the distance flown. Some constraints of the method for the altitude range are existent, however it is highlighted that this method will generally work on typical flight profiles.

2nd International Conference on Mechnaical and Aerospace Engineering (ICMAE 2011) -- JUL 29-31, 2011 -- Bangkok, THAILAND, WOS: 000303370300158, Exergy analysis permits meaningful efficiencies to be evaluated for a system or process, and the sources, causes and locations of thermodynamic losses to be determined. This study presents exergetic modeling of a small turbojet engine via exergetic response surfaces. Turbojet engine consists of an inlet, a centrifugal compressor, reverse flow combustion chamber, axial-flow turbine and exhaust nozzle. The flight Mach number and altitude are examined on the exergetic efficiencies of total engine performance. The results of analysis are given as three dimensional exergetic response surface plots related to these operating parameters., Int Assoc Comp Sci & Informat Technol

The work presents an environment awareness approach for a small rotorcraft unmanned aircraft (UA) which operates at low height using a single line laser scanner which enables a height estimation with a concurrent detection of ground fixed obstacles. The approach is suitable for small UA which are not able to carry complex and heavy 3D laser scanner mountings having additional drives or mirrors. It works without using external reference systems like DGPS. The approach was especially developed for a mission of the "International Micro Air Vehicle Conference" outdoor contest, where it is the aim to fly through a 6x6m artificial gate. The sensor data processing enables the height estimation above ground as well as the detection of obstacles in order to meet the mission's goal. The height estimation enables a near-ground flight to prevent a collision with a top boundary of the gate, and a terrain following. The obstacle detection senses the pillars of the gate and finds a safe way through the narrow gate passage. The development and optimisation of the mounting and the sensor processing, as well as the validation, was realized under operational conditions with manual remote control (RC) helicopter flights and virtual flights at a simulation environment. The results of the experiments show that with this approach the mission can be fulfilled as a reliable ground estimation and object detection is ensured.

The development of effective safety regulations for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) is an issue of paramount concern for industry. The development of this framework is a prerequisite for greater UAS access to civil airspace and, subsequently, the continued growth of the UAS industry. The direct use of the existing conventionally piloted aircraft (CPA) airworthiness certification framework for the regulation of UAS has a number of limitations. The objective of this paper is to present one possible approach for the structuring of airworthiness regulations for civilian UAS. The proposed approach facilitates a more systematic, objective and justifiable method for managing the spectrum of risk associated with the diversity of UAS and their potential operations. A risk matrix is used to guide the development of an airworthiness certification matrix (ACM). The ACM provides a structured categorisation that facilitates the future tailoring of regulations proportionate to the levels of risk associated with the operation of the UAS. As a result, an objective and traceable link may be established between mandated regulations and the overarching objective for an equivalent level of safety to CPA. The ACM also facilitates the systematic consideration of a range of technical and operational mitigation strategies. For these reasons, the ACM is proposed as a suitable method for the structuring of an airworthiness certification framework for civil or commercially operated UAS (i.e., the UAS equivalent in function to the Part 21 regulations for civil CPA) and for the further structuring of requirements on the operation of UAS in un-segregated airspace.