Cognitive Onboard Collision Avoidance

1 F. Loy July 2013

Cognitive Onboard Collision Avoidance Master Thesis

Fabian Loy

University of the Bundeswehr Munich (UBM) Institute of Flight Systems (IFS)

Naval Postgraduate School (NPS)

Center for Autonomous Vehicles Research (CAVR)

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Project Certifiable Autopilot

Development of an autopilot for UAVs that can be certified for use in civil airspace

IFS research •  Investigation of knowledge-based information processing

methods for autonomous decision making within safety-critical systems

•  Development of an assistant system using cognitive automation à higher states of autonomy, higher safety

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FCS / FMS ai

r seg

men

t gr

ound

seg

men

t

HMI

work objective

work system output

environmental conditions, information, material & energy supply

UAS Autonomy Architecture

•  agent onboard of UAV •  cooperative interaction between agent and operator

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Current available systems ACAS/TCAS •  able to display Traffic Advisories

(TA, warning) and Resolution Advisories (RA, avoidance command)

•  since altitude is defined most precisely with classic sensors, only vertical advisories are given

Problems concerning (small) UAV 1.  position determination is based

primarily on GPS (high horizontal but bad vertical accuracy)

vertical avoidance not suitable à lateral avoidance

1.  no pilot onboard to execute advisories

à cognitive element on board needed

avoid climbrate current climbrate advised climbrate

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Algorithm of Collision Detection

own UAV (A) intruder UAV (B)

" = "↓0  + "  ∙% & = &↓0  + &  ∙%

' = & − " 

|' |=|& − " |=|&↓0  − "↓0  +(&  − "  )∙%  |

Calculate Distance:

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Algorithm of Collision Detection

|' |

&  

"  

Distance below treshold

&↓0  

"↓0  

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Calculating of Avoidance Course

R

ΔΨ

ICAO Annex 2, 3.2 Avoidance of Collision

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Experimental Setup

HMI (GCS, PFD)

HAI (CAD) HMI (GCS)

UAV1 (own) UAV2 (intruder)

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PFD/CAD

safe flight warning operator substitute operator

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Hardware Setup

atom-mainboard

Ethernet HUB

Piccolo Wireless adapter

power converter

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Software Setup

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Video Flight Test Camp Roberts

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Thank you for your attention!

Any questions?