Since 1980 the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has been involved in the design and manufacture of eleven aircraft, manned and unmanned. Recently the focus has been on light unmanned research platforms to assist a number of tertiary academic institutes with research into UAS related technologies. While there is a relatively strong focus on the control and navigation aspects...

This paper reports results from field deployments of the Tempest Unmanned Aircraft System, the first of its kind of unmanned aircraft system designed to perform in situ sampling of supercell thunderstorms, including those that produce tornadoes. A description of the critical system components, consisting of the unmanned aircraft, ground support vehicles, communications network, and custom softw...

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) typically fly blind with operators in distant locations. Most UAVs are too small to carry a traffic collision avoidance system (TCAS) payload or transponder. Collision avoidance is currently done by flight planning, use of ground or air based human observers and segregated air spaces. US lawmakers propose commercial unmanned aerial systems access to national airs...

Author: Trevor Peterson Title: Effect of Time Pressure and Task Uncertainty on I luman Operator Performance and Workload for Autonomous Aerial Vehicle Missions Institution: Embry Riddle Aeronautical University Year: 2010 Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) are being utilized at an increasing rate for a number of military applications. The potential for their use in the national airspace is also of ...

Before unmanned aircraft can fly safely in civil airspace, robust airborne collision avoidance systems must be developed. Instead of hand-crafting a collision avoidance algorithm for every combination of sensor and aircraft configuration, this project investigates the automatic generation of collision avoidance logic given models of aircraft dynamics, sensor performance, and intruder behavior. ...

The Department of Defense (DoD) has continued to recognize Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (SUAS) as critical assets and the demand on their capabilities continues to grow. They are ideally suited for the dangerous or repetitive missions that otherwise require human involvement [1]. Incorporating SUAS into the battlefield will streamline systems, sensors, and analytical tasks while significantl...