Umberto Papa

Data-Driven Schemes for Robust Fault Detection of Air Data System Sensors

Failures of the air data system due to exceptional weather conditions have shown to be among the leading causes of aviation accidents. In this respect, most of aircraft Pitot tube failure detection schemes rely on mathematical models and simplified assumptions on the uncertain parameters and disturbances. These methods typically require “ad hoc” time-consuming tuning procedures that may produce unreliable performance when validated with actual flight data. In this paper, a complete semiautomated data-driven approach is introduced to select the model regressors, to identify NARX input–output prediction models, to set up robust fault detection filters and to compute fault detection thresholds. To cope with time-dependent and flight-dependent levels of uncertainties online model adaption mechanisms are introduced to limit the critical problem of minimizing the false alarm rate. Extensive validation tests have been conducted using actual flight data of a P92 Tecnam aircraft through the introduction of artificially injected hard and soft failure of the Pitot tube sensor. The approach showed to be remarkably robust in terms of false alarms while maintaining fault detectability to faults of amplitudes less than 1 m/s.

Sound power level and sound pressure level characterization of a small unmanned aircraft system during flight operations

Unmanned aerial vehicles, actually Federal Aviation Administration calls them unmanned aircraft systems, have aroused a great deal for many applications in the scientific, civil, and military sectors. The goal of this article is to evaluate the acoustic emissions of some small unmanned aircraft systems during normal flight operations (e.g. take off, landing, turning, and hovering) related to electric engines and propellers. This analysis will be useful for developing a system (unmanned aircraft systems Tracking and Reconnaissance System), which will be able to locate a small unmanned aircraft system using its sound power level, in a prefixed area. The investigation on sound power levels and sound pressure level is based on EN ISO 3745, which specifies measurement method. The acoustic measurements were carried out in an anechoic room, and the results of each unmanned aircraft system have been presented and discussed.

Conceptual Design of a Small Hybrid Unmanned Aircraft System

UAS (Unmanned Aircraft System) technologies are today extremely required in various fields of interest, from military to civil (search and rescue, environmental surveillance and monitoring, and entertainment). Besides safety and legislative issues, the main obstacle to civilian applications of UAS systems is the short time of flight (endurance), which depends on the equipped power system (battery pack) and the flight mission (low/high speed or altitude). Long flight duration is fundamental, especially with tasks that require hovering capability (e.g., river flow monitoring, earthquakes, devastated areas, city traffic monitoring, and archeological sites inspection). This work presents the conceptual design of a Hybrid Unmanned Aircraft System (HUAS), merging a commercial off-the-shelf quadrotor and a balloon in order to obtain a good compromise between endurance and weight. The mathematical models for weights estimation and balloon static performance analysis are presented, together with experimental results in different testing scenarios and complex environments, which show 50% improvement of the flight duration.

Embedded platform for UAS obstacle and landing path detection-PERSEO

The PERSEO (Piattaforma Embedded per la Ricerca del Sentiero di Atterraggio ed Ostacoli-Embedded Platform for Obstacle and Landing Path Detection) system is my Ph.D. research theme. Specifically, the idea and main research focus are the design and development of an embedded electronic platform that will be installed on an unmanned aircraft system (UAS) for attitude control and obstacle detection. The aim is to calculate and extract the landing path and detect obstacles that surround the unmanned aircraft. The sensors onboard the main platform must have these key specifications: low cost, miniature size, robustness, and fast response time.