Navigation, Guidance, Control and Dynamics Commons^™

External Runtime Execution Monitoring Of A Cyber Physical System Via Trace Interfaces, Peter Vaughan Truslow

Theses and Dissertations

In the past two decades, Unmanned Aerial Systems have progressed from expensive military hardware or one-off custom builds, to include off-the-shelf drones that can be purchased for a rather affordable price and flown by nearly anyone. As the technology and performance have improved, the door is opened to applications that require operation in environments where the consequences for failure are high, such as operating in the navigable airspace or in urban environments, or with human passengers. This requires a great deal of trust in the reliability and integrity of the control systems of the aircraft. A method of monitoring the …

Accuracy Assessment Of The Ebee Using Rtk And Ppk Corrections Methods As A Function Of Distance To A Gnss Base Station, Joseph Cerreta, David Thirtyacre, Peter Miller, Scott S. Burgess, William J. Austin

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

The use of unmanned aircraft systems to collect data for photogrammetry models has grown significantly in recent years. The accuracy of a photogrammetric model can depend on image georeferencing. The distance from a reference base station can affect the accuracy of the results. Positioning corrections data relies on precise timing measurements of satellite signals. The signals travel through the Earth's atmosphere, which introduces errors due to ionospheric and tropospheric delays. The aim of this research was to examine the eBee X and its global GNSS accuracy by comparing the RTK and PPK methods at different base station distances in photogrammetry …

Formation Control With Collision Avoidance For Fixed-Wing Unmanned Air Vehicles With Speed Constraints, Christopher Heintz

Theses and Dissertations--Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Advances in the miniaturization of powerful electronic components and motors, the democratization of global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), and improvements in the performance, safety, and cost in lithium batteries has led to the proliferation of small and relatively inexpensive unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Many of these UAVs are of the multi-rotor design, however, fixed-wing designs are often more efficient than rotary-wing aircraft, leading to a reduction in the power required for a UAV of a given mass to stay airborne. Autonomous cooperation between multiple UAVs would enable them to complete objectives that would be difficult or impossible for a single …

Development Of A Three Degree-Of-Freedom Control Simulation For A Group 3 Large Unmanned Aircraft System, Majka Anna Wilczynski

Theses and Dissertations

Aircraft modeling and simulation has become increasingly important in the aviation world. Simulations allow for safer and more economical training prior to flight testing. In this project, a three degree-of-freedom control simulation coded in a MATLAB environment is used to assess and simulate the dynamic stability of group three unmanned aircraft system. By calculating, evaluating, and simulating the static and dynamic stability derivatives of the aircraft, this project will allow for the estimation of the handling qualities of an unmanned aircraft system. This can help mitigate risks that come along with altering the mass and aerodynamic properties of an aircraft, …

Uas Model Identification And Simulation To Support In-Flight Testing Of Discrete Adaptive Fault-Tolerant Control Laws, Mansi Subhash Bakori

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

In mission-critical applications of unmanned and autonomous aerial systems(UAS), it is of significant importance to develop robust strategies for fault-tolerant systems that can countermeasure system degradation and consequently support the integration into the National Airspace (NAS). This thesis research illustrates the results of systems identification that is performed using DATCOM followed by the flight test data. This data is acquired from conducting an intensive flight testings program of a fixed-wing UAS to determine the state-space model of the aircraft. A discrete state-space system is reconstructed from these models to derive Auto-Regressive Moving-Average (ARMA) models used to design a Discrete Direct …

Power-Over-Tether Uas Leveraged For Nearly-Indefinite Meteorological Data Acquisition, Daniel Rico, Carrick Detweiler, Francisco Muñoz-Arriola

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Use of unmanned aerial systems (UASs) in agriculture has risen in the past decade. These systems are key to modernizing agriculture. UASs collect and elucidate data previously difficult to obtain and used to help increase agricultural efficiency and production. Typical commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) UASs are limited by small payloads and short flight times. Such limits inhibit their ability to provide abundant data at multiple spatiotemporal scales. In this paper, we describe the design and construction of the tethered aircraft unmanned system (TAUS), which is a novel power-over-tether UAS leveraging the physical presence of the tether to launch multiple sensors along …

Cyber-Attack Drone Payload Development And Geolocation Via Directional Antennae, Clint M. Bramlette

Theses and Dissertations

The increasing capabilities of commercial drones have led to blossoming drone usage in private sector industries ranging from agriculture to mining to cinema. Commercial drones have made amazing improvements in flight time, flight distance, and payload weight. These same features also offer a unique and unprecedented commodity for wireless hackers -- the ability to gain ‘physical’ proximity to a target without personally having to be anywhere near it. This capability is called Remote Physical Proximity (RPP). By their nature, wireless devices are largely susceptible to sniffing and injection attacks, but only if the attacker can interact with the device via …

Urban Flow And Small Unmanned Aerial System Operations In The Built Environment, Kevin A. Adkins

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has put forth a set of regulations (Part 107) that govern small unmanned aerial system (sUAS) operations. These regulations restrict unmanned aircraft (UA) from flying over people and their operation to within visual line of sight (VLOS). However, as new applications for unmanned aerial systems (UAS) are discovered, their capabilities improve, and regulations evolve, there is an increasing desire to undertake urban operations, such as urban air mobility, package delivery, infrastructure inspection, and surveillance. This built environment poses new weather hazards that include enhanced wind shear and turbulence. The smaller physical dimensions, lower mass and …

Design And Test Of A Uav Swarm Architecture Over A Mesh Ad-Hoc Network, Timothy J. Allen

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to develop a testable swarm architecture such that the swarm of UAVs collaborate as a team rather than acting as several independent vehicles. Commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) components were used as they were low-cost, readily available, and previously proven to work with at least two networked UAVs. Initial testing was performed via software-in-the-loop (SITL) demonstrating swarming of three simulated multirotor aircraft, then transitioned to real hardware. The architecture was then tested in an outdoor nylon netting enclosure. Command and control (C2) was provided by software implementing an enhanced version of Reynolds’ flocking rules via an onboard …

Unmanned Aerial Systems: Research, Development, Education & Training At Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Michael P. Hickey

Publications

With technological breakthroughs in miniaturized aircraft-related components, including but not limited to communications, computer systems and sensors, state-of-the-art unmanned aerial systems (UAS) have become a reality. This fast-growing industry is anticipating and responding to a myriad of societal applications that will provide new and more cost-effective solutions that previous technologies could not, or will replace activities that involved humans in flight with associated risks.

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University has a long history of aviation-related research and education, and is heavily engaged in UAS activities. This document provides a summary of these activities, and is divided into two parts. The first part …

Design And Evaluation Of Novel Attitude Estimation System Using Mems Sensors For Indoor Uas, Joshua Bruce Milam

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Most small unmanned aerial systems in use today, employ extended Kalman filter sensor fusion algorithms in order to provide accurate estimations of attitude or orientation. These complex algorithms use measurements from GPS receivers and magnetometer sensors that can be rendered useless in GPS denied environments or areas of significant magnetic interference, such as inside buildings or other structures. The complexity of these algorithms makes them inaccessible for some researchers and hobbyists who wish to code their own attitude estimation algorithms. This complexity is also computationally expensive and requires processors that are powerful enough to operate the algorithms along with any …

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (Uav): Flight Performance, Fevens Louis Jean

Student Works

It is important that when measuring the sideslip angle and angles of attack during flight test performance of a UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle), to fully understand that the Angles of attack and sideslip are parameters that aid in determining the safety of the flight as they improve stability and control of the aircraft. The disadvantage of the measurement of these angles using this method is low accuracy of measurement due to friction to the potentiometers in connection with the vanes. To counter this, a new sensing method was developed to minimize friction and collect more accurate data. The method is …

Cyber-Physical System Characterization And Co-Regulation Of A Quadrotor Uas, Seth E. Doebbeling

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

An Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) is a Cyber-Physical System (CPS) in which a host of real-time computational tasks contending for shared resources must be cooperatively managed to obtain mission objectives. Traditionally, control of the UAS is designed assuming a fixed, high sampling rate in order to maintain reliable performance and margins of stability. But emerging methods challenge this design by dynamically allocating resources to computational tasks, thereby affecting control and mission performance. To apply these emerging strategies, a characterization and understanding of the effects of timing on control and trajectory following performance is required. Going beyond traditional control evaluation techniques, …

Integrating Unmanned Aircraft Operations Into The National Airspace System, Benjamin Cook, Holly Hughes, Allison Little, Kyle Wilkerson, Jennah C. Perry, Johnny Young, Jacqueline Luedtke

Publications

Commercial unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) are expected to dominate the National Airspace System (NAS) in the years to come. One particular barrier preventing integration of UAS into the NAS is the lack of standardized procedures for separating aircraft and communicating with ATC. In preparation for adopting unmanned flight operations into a complex control system, it is important to identify solutions to effectively control UAS in the NAS.

The Joint UAS and ATC Team (JUAT) group has designed several simulated ATC scenarios in order to determine effective solutions for integration. Through the use of digitized radar display overlays that replicate the …

Assessment Of Asymmetric Flight On Solar Uas, Eric Belfield

Master's Theses

An investigation was conducted into the feasibility of using an unconventional flight technique, asymmetric flight, to improve overall efficiency of solar aircraft. In this study, asymmetric flight is defined as steady level flight in a non-wings-level state in- tended to improve solar incidence angle. By manipulating aircraft orientation through roll angle, solar energy collection is improved but aerodynamic efficiency is worsened due to the introduction of additional trim drag. A point performance model was devel- oped to investigate the trade-off between improvement in solar energy collection and additional drag associated with asymmetric flight. A mission model with a focus on …

Uas Capabilities And Performance Modeling For Application Analysis, Brent Terwilliger, Dennis Vincenzi, David Ison, Rene Herron, Todd Smith

Publications

Our team of researchers from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University-Worldwide has been actively compiling published performance data associated with commercially-off-the-shelf (COTS) group 1 to 3 fixed-wing and vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) in an effort to develop statistical models of each category. The captured data, which includes maximum speed, cruise speed, endurance, weights, wind limitations, and costs, is used to calculate capabilities including range (one-way and return), time to objective, station keeping duration, maneuver requirements, and derive limited missing information (e.g., component speeds and weights). The benefit from assembling such a unified collection of information and the calculation …

Thinking Rather Than Panicking About The Current Drone Threat, Tom Foley, Tyrone Groh

Aviation / Aeronautics / Aerospace International Research Conference

Originally titled "UAS Threats in Sport Venues," the authors opted to expand their focus to better to all threats from UASs, and to encourage better preparation for and responses to such threats. Foley and Groh discuss different strategies.