Unmanned aircraft

Progress in aeronautics and astronautics within the past decades has been remarkable because people have learned to master the difficult feat of hypervelocity flight. A variety of manned and unmanned aircraft have been developed for faster transportation from one point on earth to another. Similarly, aerospace vehicles have been constructed for further exploration of the vast depths of space and the neighboring planets in the solar system. 

Platforms manned-unmanned aircraft, balloons, trains, vans In situ or remote sensors with 0.01 to 10 second response Remote Sensing (Trends and Distributions)... 

The COA or Certificate of Operation allows an air vehicle that does not nominally meet FAA safety standards access to the Nation Airspace System. The COA application process includes measures to mitigate risks, such as sectioning off the airspace to be used by the unmanned aircraft and preventing other aircraft from entering the space. 

Unmanned Aircraft in the National Airspace System (Spring 2007). 

AeroVironment is a technology company that was founded in 1971 by Paul MacCready. The company focuses on energy technologies and unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). They are perhaps best known for the solar-powered Helios Prototype that was built for NASA. They have also built and produced a wide range of UAVs. 

STEPHEN J. MORRIS, president of MLB Company in Palo Alto, California, has been designing, building and flight-testing small unmanned aircraft for more than 15 years. He conducted research on oblique-wing aircraft and led the design... 

Individual agent detection instruments have limited utility, especially outside a laboratory. To be fully useful, field instruments need to be integrated into a suite of instruments and deployed as a measurement system with automated sample acquisition, instrument control and data acquisition, quality assurance, analysis, transmission and archiving capabilities. Laboratory instruments may not need to be as fully integrated. Agent-detection instrument suites may be deployed at fixed sites or on mobile platforms, including ground vehicles, ships, and piloted or unmanned aircraft. 

Akce, A., M. Johnson, and T. Bretl. 2010. Remote Tele-operation of an Unmanned Aircraft with a Brain-Machine Interace Theory and Preliminary Results. Presentation at 2010 International Robotics and Automation Conference. Available online at http //www.akce.mme/presentations/ ICRA2010.pdf. 

Certifiable Autonomous Flight Management for Unmanned Aircraft Systems... 

The aerospace community has adopted the term unmanned aircraft system (UAS) to replace unmanned air vehicle (UAV), because a contemporary unmanned aircraft is a complex system of tightly integrated hardware and software that typically supports data acquisition, processing, and communication rather than cargo transport. 

With limited redundancy, highly dynamic routes, and strictly remote supervision, small UAS face formidable automation challenges. As the number of unmanned aircraft increases and as safety-oriented technology development continues to lag behind the development of new platforms, mission capabilities, and operational effi-ciency (e.g., one operator for multiple vehicles), it is beconung increasingly urgent that these issues be addressed. In addition, a large user base... 

CERTIFIABLE AUTONOMOUS FUGHT MANAGEMENT FOR UNMANNED AIRCRAFT 113... 

Small operators, from general and sports aviation to unmanned aircraft, will require low-cost options to the current FMS. Although advanced miniaturized electronics can make low-cost, lightweight FMS possible (Beard, 2010), producing and marketing these systems will require a concerted effort in the face of potentially slim profit maigins and formidable validation and verification requirements. 

CERTIFIABLE AUTONOMOUS FLIGHT MANAGEMENT FOR UNMANNED AIRCRAFT 115... 

Today s unmanned aircraft are flown by remote pilots/operators who designate waypoints or a sequence of waypoints, as well as a rendezvous location. However, as was mentioned above, communication (lost link) failure is a common and challenging nmesolved issue for UAS. Addressing this problem will require that developers not only improve the availability of links, but simultaneously pursue technological advances that will render links less critical to safety. 

This will mean that UAS will mix with the full fleet of manned operations, ranging from sports and recreational aircraft operated by pilots with limited training to jets carrying hundreds of passengers. UAS missions also will overfly populated areas for a variety of purposes, such as monitoring traffic, collecting atmospheric data over urban centers, and inspecting sites of interest. Even small unmanned aircraft have the capacity to provide support for communication, courier services, and so on." ... 

Unmanned aircraft can work in formations that can be modeled and directed as a single entity by air traffic controllers. This capability can give controllers much more leeway in sequencing and separating larger sets of traffic than would be possible if all UAS flights were considered distinct. 

Large cargo carriers would also benefit from flying unmanned aircraft, which require only base personnel who would not have to be loeated at potential departure sites. 

FIGURE 1 Emerging commercial applications for unmanned aircraft. Source Atkins et al 2009. 

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