Marc Perez-Batlle

Enabling Dynamic Parametric Scans for Unmanned Aircraft System Remote Sensing Missions

This paper presents a methodology for performing dynamic and parametric scanning operations for unmanned aircraft systems on remote sensing missions. Most unmanned aircraft system autopilots only support elemental waypoint-based guidance, whereas most remote sensing applications imply the surveillance of wide areas that require the execution of elaborate scan patterns. Moreover, the long endurance of unmanned aircraft system platforms allows one to envisage future operations in which the areas to be scanned may dynamically change during an unmanned aircraft system flight. Using elemental waypoints to design and potentially update scan patterns is a time-consuming, inefficient, and highly restrictive strategy. This paper discusses how to provide dynamic parametric scans over an area-navigation-like flight-plan manager that feeds basic waypoints to the unmanned aircraft system autopilot. Preliminary results demonstrate the feasibility and flexibility of the proposed method based on flight simulations of com...

Departure and Approach procedures for Unammed Aircraft Systems in a Visual-Flight-Rule Environment

This paper assesses the departure and approach operations of unmanned aircraft systems in one of the most challenging scenarios: flying under visual flight rules. Inspired by some existing procedures for (manned) general aviation, some automatic and predefined procedures for unmanned aircraft systems are proposed. Hence, standardized paths to specific waypoints close to the airport are defined for departure operations, just before starting the navigation phase. Conversely, and for the approach maneuvers, a first integration into a holding pattern near the landing runway (ideally, above it) is foreseen, followed by a standard visual-flight-rule airfield traffic pattern. This paper discuses the advantages of these operations, which aim to minimize possible conflicts with other existing aircraft while reducing the pilot-in-command workload. Finally, some preliminary simulations are shown in which these procedures have been successfully tested with simulated surrounding traffic.

Remote Flight Inspection Using Unmanned Aircraft

Aircraft instrument navigation is based on radio signal technology provided by ground navigation aids (navaids). The International Civil Aviation Organization specifies the required navaids availability, quality, accuracy, and integrity for ground installations on service, including the flight inspection operations. Flight inspection is the task of validating the radio signal emitted by navaids. This paper presents the architecture of a novel system for flight inspection based on the use of unmanned aircraft. The proposed architecture is operated remotely and has flight inspection capabilities by using radio signal sensors. It also has a precise positioning system, based on global navigation satellite system, and uses a data link with low bandwidth, long range, and redundancy. Except for congested airports, the flight inspection is done in segregated airspace. These segregated airspace inspection flights could be a catapult for seriously considering unmanned aircraft benefits in civil services. Unmanned a...

Estimation and prediction of weather variables from surveillance data using spatio-temporal Kriging

State-of-the-art weather data obtained from numerical weather predictions are unlikely to satisfy the requirements of the future air traffic management system. A potential approach to improve the resolution and accuracy of the weather predictions could consist on using airborne aircraft as meteorological sensors, which would provide up-to-date weather observations to the surrounding aircraft and ground systems. This paper proposes to use Kriging, a geostatistical interpolation technique, to create short-term weather predictions from scattered weather observations derived from surveillance data. Results show that this method can accurately capture the spatio-temporal distribution of the temperature and wind fields, allowing to obtain high-quality local, short-term weather predictions and providing at the same time a measure of the uncertainty associated with the prediction.

A methodology for measuring the impact on flight inefficiency of future RPAS operations

This paper presents a simple methodology for measuring the impact on flight inefficiency of future Remotely-Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) operations. State-of-the-art inefficiency metrics have been selected and adapted to this particular case in which the analysed traffic is not real but simulated. Then, three different simulation exercises encompassing a total of eight simulation runs have been performed in which an in active Air Traffic Controller (ATCo) was involved. Preliminary results show that the use of these metrics is acceptable to measure the impact of RPAS operations on the flight inefficiency of surrounding traffic and lays the foundation to extend the simulation exercises to get statistically significant outcomes.

Paired T-test analysis to measure the efficiency impact of a flying RPAS in the non-segregated airspace

In the context of the ERAINT project, a number of human-in-the-loop simulations were conducted to study the implications of integrating a remote piloted aircraft system (RPAS) into the managed airspace. For the purpose of this study, the RPAS was assumed to be involved in surveillance missions, flying a large-endurance scan pattern. The area of surveillance was selected such that it crossed an active airway for approaches. Furthermore, the simulations also included situations in which the RPAS was involved in an emergency situation such as lost links and engine failures. From previous work, the results obtained from these simulations showed that the air traffic controllers (ATCs) could successfully manage the required separations for airspace safety assurance. Nevertheless, the number of total commands issued increased, in particular the number of requirements for altitude changes, and especially those destined to commercial aircraft. Given an aircrafts flying altitude impact on performance, one question rapidly arose: Is there an increase in flight costs for airlines as a result of the increased number of ATC commands issued to provide the necessary separation with the RPAS? For this purpose two metrics relating to time and fuel are defined such that they are targeted on quantifying the economic impact for commercial air traffic resulting from the presence of a RPAS. Both metrics are computed from the ADS-B traces of all aircraft in the sector and the results of each simulation are compared with those of a baseline simulation, in which the RPAS is not present. To improve on the comparison between each simulations results we complement this study with a statistical analysis of the available data samples using paired t-test analyses to determine if the observed differences are statistically significant or simply due to random variability.

Towards the automation of the UAS mission management

Most unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) are, at present, designed for military purposes and very few civil applications have been developed mainly because the lack of a regulation basis concerning their certification, airworthiness and operations. UAS operations have always been solutions highly dependent on the mission to be accomplished and on the scenario of flight. The generalized development of UAS applications is still limited by the absence of systems that support the development of the actual operations. Most current UAS solutions, if not remotely piloted, rely on waypoint based flight control system for their navigation and are unable to coordinate the aircraft flight with payload and mission operation. In this paper, an architecture for providing automation in UAS application is presented. This architecture is part of a UAS-specific distributed service-oriented architecture designed to enable easy reconfiguration and deployment of UAS in a wide range of scenarios without (or very little) additional system development. Flight, payload and mission service coordination, service interfaces and message interactions between services are discussed in this paper. Finally, a preliminary prototype of these services has been implemented to validate the purpose architecture specification. Additionally, a helicopter-based UAS is being developed to test in real scenarios the automation capabilities provided by the USAL architecture.

Architecture issues and challenges for the integration of rpas in non-segregated airspace

Despite the evolution of unmanned aircraft systems (UASs), the technological development on airframes, autopilots, communications and payload, is still limited by the absence of software standardization. Engineers face the development of UAS systems with the implementation of ad-hoc solutions to satisfy the mission requirements. This is a major limitation with regard to the software maintenance and re-usability that may result in an increment of both project cost and risk. Well-structured UAS avionics supporting increased levels of automation (and eventually autonomy), together with reconfiguration capabilities and cost-effectiveness, are key requirements for UAS to be successful in a global scenario. Additionally the major civil applications require UAS with access to non-segregated airspace. Following Eurocontrol, FAA and ICAO philosophy, the introduction of unmanned traffic should not affect ATM operations, thus UAS should comply with the performance levels required by SESAR and NextGen. Hence, operations with unmanned aircraft should guarantee safe and efficient interaction with the ATM system. In that aspect gaps and issues into unmanned aircraft software architectures are discussed in this paper. Required mechanism for ATM communication, collision avoidance, maneuver automation and SESAR/NextGen integration are discussed to identify possible short-term and long-term software requirements. Moreover, existing standardized software frameworks and proposed software proposed are reviewed to identify the gaps it should deal with to achieve an efficient UAS integration.