Schwalb, Edward (MSC Software), Schwalb, Joseph (Student)

Improving Redundancy and Safety of UTM by Leveraging Multiple UASs

Scheduled for presentation during the Regular Session "Risk & Reliability" (WeA3), Wednesday, June 12, 2019, 10:00−10:20, Heritage C

2020 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS), June 11-14, 2019, Athens, Greece

This information is tentative and subject to change. Compiled on April 18, 2024

Abstract

Reliability is one key challenge facing safe widespread integration of UASs within controlled airspaces. We explore architectures and operational concepts which can compensate for partial failures and bridge the reliability gap. Our exploration leads to an operational approach which leverages multiple UASs to achieve redundancies. We show the significant benefits of the approach to simultaneously reduce impact of localization errors, achieve better resilience under degraded communications, gracefully remove from airspace UAS compromised by cyber attacks, and improve conflict management. Our analysis is supported by a UTM simulation. The realism improvements of our simulaition stem from implementation of Firmware In the Loop (FITL), Intent Control Loop (ICL) and of execution contingencies as concurrent high priority activities. Whereas the scope of the reliability challenges at the UTM level are immense, we hope that our approach can serve as a starting point.