Quantifying situation awareness for small unmanned aircraft

2018

A formidable barrier for small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) to be integrated into civil airspace is that small UAS currently lack the ability to Detect and Avoid (DAA) other aircraft during ight operations; however, this ability is an essential part of regulations governing the general operation of aircraft in civil airspace. In this way, the research described is focused on achieving an equivalent level of safety for small UAS as manned aircraft in civil airspace. A small UAS DAA system was proposed to guide small UAS to detect nearby traffic, identify hazards, assess collision risks, perform mitigation analyses, and choose appropriate maneuvers to avoid potential collisions in mid-air encounters. To facilitate system development and performance evaluation, the proposed DAA system was designed and implemented on a fast-time simulation-based analysis platform, on which a set of quantifiable analysis metrics were designed for small UAS to improve situation awareness in hazard iden...

2009

As mini-UAVs become more capable and reliable, it is important to start looking at the factors differentiating them from other classes of unmanned vehicles. One such factor is the physical proximity of operators to the vehicle during deployment. Operators of these UAVs are often within sight of their vehicle, and share many environmental cues such as visual landmarks.

Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems, 2020

The purpose of this study was to determine the key physical variables for visual detection of small, Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), and to learn how these variables influence the ability of human pilots, in manned-aircraft operating between 60-knots to 160-knots in the airport terminal area, to see these small, unmanned aircraft in time to avoid a collision. The study also produced a set of probability curves for various operating scenarios, depicting the likelihood of visually detecting a small, unmanned aircraft in time to avoid colliding with it. The study used the known limits of human visual acuity, based on the mechanics of the human eye and previous research on human visual detection of distant objects, to define the human performance constraints for the visual search task. The results of the analysis suggest the probability of detection, in all cases modeled during the study, is far less than 50 percent. The probability of detection was well under 10 percent for small UAS aircraft similar to the products used by many recreational and hobby operators. The results of this study indicate the concept of see-and-avoid is not a reliable technique for collision prevention by manned-aircraft pilots when it comes to operating near small, unmanned aircraft. Since small, unmanned aircraft continue to appear in viii thoughtful challenges, and editorial comments drove me to research, explore, and test many more facets of this problem than I would have considered probing on my own. Thank you to Dr. Alan J. Stolzer for his inspiration and encouragement regarding my academic writing efforts. He inspired my strong interest in safety management systems and aviation safety research. This educational experience has been one of the major highlights of my life, and the combination of safety management, human factors, and systems engineering has been a perfect fit with my career-related passions. Thank you to Sam DeBartolo, a great friend, a superb pilot, and a promising student who is part of our future in the aviation industry. His enthusiastic help in gathering data about popular recreational drone products was both helpful and informative. Most of all, I wish to thank my wife, Sarah, and my entire family, for their enduring love, patience, understanding, and sacrifices these past several years. I know it was not easy having me lost in my studies and removed from our day-today lives for these past numerous years. I would not have made it through this without Sarah's love, support, and encouragement. I am so lucky to have her in my life and cannot begin to describe how much I cherish her love. ix

Proceedings of the 1st ACM SIGCHI/ …, 2006

This paper presents a fine-grained decomposition of situation awareness (SA) as it pertains to the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and uses this decomposition to understand the types of SA attained by operators of the Desert Hawk UAV. Since UAVs are airborne robots, we adapt a definition previously developed for human-robot awareness after learning about the SA needs of operators through observations and interviews. We describe the applicability of UAV-related SA for people in three roles: UAV operators, air traffic controllers, and pilots of manned aircraft in the vicinity of UAVs. Using our decomposition, UAV interaction designers can specify SA needs and analysts can evaluate a UAV interface's SA support with greater precision and specificity than can be attained using other SA definitions.

Applied Sciences

Situational awareness formation is one of the most critical elements in solving the problem of UAV behavior control. It aims to provide information support for UAV behavior control according to its objectives and tasks to be completed. We consider the UAV to be a type of controlled dynamic system. The article shows the place of UAVs in the hierarchy of dynamic systems. We introduce the concepts of UAV behavior and activity and formulate requirements for algorithms for controlling UAV behavior. We propose the concept of situational awareness as applied to the problem of behavior control of highly autonomous UAVs (HA-UAVs) and analyze the levels and types of this situational awareness. We show the specifics of situational awareness formation for UAVs and analyze its differences from situational awareness for manned aviation and remotely piloted UAVs. We propose the concept of situational awareness as applied to the problem of UAV behavior control and analyze the levels and types of th...

The International C2 Journal, 2008

Despite the name Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), humans are integral to UAV operations. Since the UAV's operator interface is the primary facilitator of human-vehicle communication and coordination, an effectively designed interface is critical for successful UAV operations. To design an effective interface, it is essential to first determine the information needs for both the human and UAV components of the UAV system. We present the Human-UAV Awareness Framework, which we developed to inform UAV system design by detailing what information components should be provided to the human through the operator interface and to the vehicles as part of their onboard systems. Since there are a variety of UAV system designs, including a number of different possible human-UAV control schemes, the paper outlines the particular types of information that would be needed for two possible UAV system contexts: a base case, which assumes one human controller and one UAV, and a general case, which assumes n human controllers and m UAVs. The paper discusses several practical considerations involved in applying the framework to UAV system design, including the level of automation of the UAVs, potential human-UAV control schemes, humans' roles, and interaction with UAV stakeholders.

IEEE Systems Journal, 2019

Situation awareness (SA) is an important constituent in human information processing and essential in pilots' decision-making processes. Acquiring and maintaining appropriate levels of SA is critical in aviation environments as it affects all decisions and actions taking place in flights and air traffic control. This paper provides an overview of recent measurement models and approaches to establishing and enhancing SA in aviation environments. Many aspects of SA are examined including the classification of SA techniques into six categories, and different theoretical SA models from individual, to shared or team, and to distributed or system levels. Quantitative and qualitative perspectives pertaining to SA methods and issues of SA for unmanned vehicles are also addressed. Furthermore, future research directions regarding SA assessment approaches are raised to deal with shortcomings of the existing state-of-the-art methods in the literature.

Collaboration and sharing of data across the command structure continues to be a crucial factor in UAV systems. What was once a simple command console is now challenged by the number of simultaneous, in-theater UAVs, and the enormous increase in telemetrics, especially high quality video and Synthetic Aperture RADAR (SAR) data that must be assimilated and shared for maximizing and optimizing the infrastructure's effectiveness. Infrastructures initially designed for the control of a single UAV and the data generated are faced with the burden of UAVs in the constant process of being upgraded, yet their ground stations remained relatively unchanged. As design engineers constantly added more and better sensor capabilities to the aircraft, their data centers became overwhelmed. Simply adding more storage and some processing power within limits of the execution architecture only provide incremental relief. The refrain, " data is all over the floor " was, and probably still heard quite often. Specifically, the ability to extract, consolidate and synthesize metadata from these updated UAVs for future retrieval of HD video, Electro Optical Infra Red (EO-IR), radar, geodetic, etc, data feeds into a reasonably useful database became nearly impossible. Real time video is generally stored, yet in many cases, without the capability of local processing. Post-processing is always delayed, negating much of its tactical usefulness. With multiple UAVs feeding data into an infrastructure, the architecture must be resilient and scalable enough to ingest increasingly vast amount of data, yet able to disseminate crucial actionable information throughout the command structure. In addition, this integrated infrastructure must allow collaboration not only between varied command centers, but must be able to integrate non-UAV sourced real time intelligence into the current solution. In the words of renown Israeli UAV commander, Major Yair, " You have to make life and death calls in seconds " 1 An intercepted cell phone call could weigh heavily on an attack decision. Decisions not made with the maximum available data and intelligence can be costly. The ability of a UAV infrastructure to maximize data availability and real time collaboration is the key. The result has many of the characteristics of a complex dynamic system, such as:  Feedback, both system and human  Extracting order out of otherwise chaotic-looking events  Withstanding failures – there are no reruns on live videos  Generally hierarchical, somebody makes the final decision within a subordinate military structure Situational Awareness

2017

The purpose of this study was to determine the key physical variables for visual detection of small, Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), and to learn how these variables influence the ability of human pilots, in manned-aircraft operating between 60-knots to 160-knots in the airport terminal area, to see these small, unmanned aircraft in time to avoid a collision. The study also produced a set of probability curves for various operating scenarios, depicting the likelihood of visually detecting a small, unmanned aircraft in time to avoid colliding with it. The study used the known limits of human visual acuity, based on the mechanics of the human eye and previous research on human visual detection of distant objects, to define the human performance constraints for the visual search task. The results of the analysis suggest the probability of detection, in all cases modeled during the study, is far less than 50 percent. The probability of detection was well under 10 percent for small UAS ...

2011

This paper deals with the importance of expertise for improving situational awareness and real-time picture. As an example we use Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS). Our research process began by defining the topic and objectives as well as the theory of experience. Research material was collected through interviews and by analyzing scientific publications, newspaper articles and video clips. Most of the scientific publications from the subject concentrate only on the building, on the planning and on the technical properties of UAS. The unmanned model planes are used mainly for different military purposes at the moment. On the basis of this we ensured that we are studying this issue in question among the first ones in Finland. In this paper we use the method of case study research to improve the situational awareness and real-time picture by using UASs in organizations.