Cybersecurity Challenges of the Civilian Unmanned Aircraft Systems

Human Challenges in the Maintenance of Unmanned Aircraft Systems

Executive Summary Human error will pose a threat to the operation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), just as it does in other fields of aviation. If UAVs are to be permitted to operate in the National Airspace System (NAS), it will be necessary to understand the human factors associated with these vehicles. Rather than eliminating the potential for human error, the removal of the on-board pilo...

Unmanned aircraft systems as wingmen

This paper introduces a method to integrate Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UASs) into a highly functional manned/ unmanned team through the design and implementation of 3D distributed formation/flight control algorithms with the goal to act as wingmen for a manned aircraft. The proposed algorithms are designed to increase UAS autonomy, dynamically modify formations, utilize standard operating forma...

Handling Qualities Evaluations of Unmanned Aircraft Systems

Research with Collaborative Unmanned Aircraft Systems

We provide an overview of ongoing research which targets development of a principled framework for mixed-initiative interaction with unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). UASs are now becoming technologically mature enough to be integrated into civil society. Principled interaction between UASs and human resources is an essential component in their future uses in complex emergency services or blueli...

Choosing Replanning Strategies for Unmanned Aircraft Systems

Unmanned aircraft systems use a variety of techniques to plan collision-free flight paths given a map of obstacles and nofly zones. However, maps are not perfect and obstacles may change over time or be detected during flight, which may invalidate paths that the aircraft is already following. Thus, dynamic in-flight replanning is required. Numerous strategies can be used for replanning, where t...