Analysis of Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles ITS Concept of Operations
Principal Investigator:
Demoz Gebre-Egziabher, Assistant Professor, Aerospace Engineering & Mechanics
Co-Investigator:
- Greg Nelson, Research Engineer, Aerospace Engineering & Mechanics
Project Summary:
Recently, the idea of using remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) or Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for traffic management and infrastructure security has received a significant amount of attention. The economic and social motivations for using ROV/UAVs in this application are very compelling. For this vision to become a reality, however, methods for inexpensively building and safely operating these ROV/UAVs must be developed. Safety is paramount, because these ROV/UAVs are expected to operate over populated areas and potentially share the same national airspace with passenger aircraft. The goal of this project is to develop and demonstrate a systematic methodology for evaluating whether the operational concept of using ROV/UAVs to monitor vehicle states and other useful traffic parameters meets safety requirements established by regulation. The methodology involves identifying hazards associated with the concept of operation and quantifying the likelihood of their occurrence. For hazards where the likelihood of occurrence is judged to be too large, risk mitigation strategies will be developed. This methodology will be a useful tool for establishing certification standards by federal and state agencies responsible for the safe operation of ROV/UAVs. It will also be a useful tool for designers of ROV/UAVs and associated systems because it can be used to map operational requirements (e.g., system reliability, required accuracy on vehicle location and velocity estimation, etc.,) into hardware specifications. Operational procedure designers can also use it to determine the required operator qualifications for this given concept of operation. Error models for the sensors that will be part of this system have been developed. Methods for overbounding these errors (i.e., bound the risk) has been developed. The methods are now being incorporated into the overall attitude determination system model to relate reliability (or risk) to sensor quality. Following this, risk mitigation strategies will be developed for failure modes considered to be realistic will be developed.
Sponsor:
Project Details:
- Start date: 01/2008
- Project Status: Active
- Research Area: Transportation Safety and Traffic Flow
- Topics: Intelligent Vehicles