Dagi Geister

Integrating RPAS - published approach procedures vs. local arrangements

This paper presents the setup, the assessment methods, and the results of a flight trial that was conducted in June 2016 in order to demonstrate integration of remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS) into the current airspace, while also acknowledging that there are challenges to overcome. An RPAS demonstrator received a flight plan from the ground control station (GCS) using a ground-based data link, departing from Braunschweig-Wolfsburg airport and flying towards Leipzig/Halle airport on published routing. When approaching Leipzig/Halle airport, the data link was lost as predicted, and the arrival procedure was altered by air traffic control (ATC), which showed that an additional and dedicated RPAS controller at arrival airports might be valuable and advantageous. Focus of this paper is the description of the components that were used during the trial and their interconnectivity, the evaluation of quantitative recorded data and the qualitative experienced difficulties and challenges. Assessment of the recorded data is divided into data link quality, data link latency, and flight following performance (vertical and lateral following accuracy), with the latter being linked to existing performance based navigation (PBN) parameters by ICAO and height-keeping performance values by EASA. The paper concludes with a discussion on the investigated integration concept.

Enhancing unmanned flight operations in crisis management with live aerial images

This paper presents the design and execution of a flight experiment in 2015, which was designed to investigate new technologies for crisis management by using a remotely piloted aircraft system (RPAS) demonstrator for airborne image collection. Based on an assumed crisis scenario, which simulates a severe flooding that caused road damages and enclosed people in water, several aspects of crisis management were tested and validated. Aerial images were collected and sent to the ground in two flight phases with different objectives. The focus of this paper is to present the technical set-up of the experiment and involved systems, an overview of different scan and search patterns, the realization of flight plans using these patterns, and the actual execution of the experiment in two phases. Examples for the usage of live images in ground systems are presented. The contribution of such a system to crisis management is discussed, and current legal limitations are taken into account. An overview of upcoming experiments and developments of the involved systems is given.

Efficient Deployment of Multiple RPAS - Approaches towards Optimal Mission Planning Techniques

Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) have shown a great potential for civil usage during the last years. Different platforms have been used after several major disasters and provided great support to the different phases of crisis management. DLR’s Institute of Flight Guidance currently works on several projects, that deal with RPAS use in disaster management missions as well as in maritime security missions. Large scale disasters like Tsunamis, floods, or extensive forest fires might possibly require the use of several RPAS at the same time. It is known from several applications that the performance of the whole group will improve if all members of a swarm work cooperatively. Therefore, various researches have striven towards development and application of different algorithms, that enable optimized mission planning for a group of RPAS. While several studies focus on strategic mission planning approaches, this contribution also examines online optimization methods to deal with arising demands during mission execution in a most efficient way. Selected methods have been integrated and tested within DLR’s Research Ground Control Station (GCS) U-Fly.

Trajectory-based mission planner for multiple RPAS

The extent to which Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) are able to autonomously perform basic navigation and flight control tasks currently increases through ongoing technological advances. These novel systems and the increased mission scenario complexity present new challenges to the future RPAS pilot. These new responsibilities will include decisions at the level of mission management and mission planning, which require extensive knowledge of mission objectives and constraints, available resources and terrestrial conditions in addition to the understanding of the aircrafts systems. The Institute of Flight Guidance of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) currently aims to develop an advanced mission planner to deal with groups of Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA). The mission planner shall be responsible to calculate optimized mission plans based on variable mission objectives and constraints. In the context of an upcoming European demonstration project for crisis management, the new planning module will be applied to determine optimal flight paths for multiple RPA assigned to scan an area of interest in the shortest time possible. One of the key research aspects will be the determination of an appropriate level of RPAS autonomy, when trying to optimize human-machine interaction and improving situational awareness of remote pilots in controlling multiple RPA simultaneously. This contribution provides a summary of current mission planning approaches in the area of RPAS and introduces the concept of 4D trajectory-based mission planning within the framework of DLRs RPA Ground Control Station (GCS). It also presents an analysis of the newly imposed system requirements and improvement opportunities.