Aviation Commons^™

Color-Coding: An Aid Or Hindrance In A Multi-Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Supervisory Control Task, Austin Daniel Wood

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the current study was to investigate the effect of coding types (i.e., alphanumeric coding, color-coding, and redundant color + alphanumeric coding) for vehicle identification and status information on pilots’ recognition performance, situational awareness (SA), and workload for a multi-vehicle operations ground control station (GCS) supervisory control task. With the aviation industry's push towards operators supervising and controlling multiple vehicles, it is pertinent to identify design features that support the capabilities and limitations of human operators. The current study employed a within-subjects, repeated-measures experimental design, in which a sample of 33 students with aviation experience performed three trials, …

Uav-Based Sensor Integration For In-Situ Lake Water Quality Monitoring, Alec R. Campbell

Biological and Agricultural Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Surface water monitoring is often constrained by limited spatial and temporal coverage due to the labor-intensive nature of traditional sampling methods, particularly in environments that are difficult to access or pose safety risks. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) offer a promising solution by enabling more frequent, spatially distributed, and cost-effective data collection. This study presented the design, development, and field evaluation of a UAV-based system for real-time, in-situ water quality monitoring. The system integrated multiple sensors, including oxidation-reduction potential (ORP), RGB spectrometry, pH, electrical conductivity (EC), dissolved oxygen (DO), and a multispectral spectrometer within a UAV platform.

Field testing was conducted …

Evaluating Uav Visual-Inertial Odometry Trajectory Error And Feature-Level Metrics Over Repetitive Floor Patterns, Anass El Mekkoussi

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Visual-Inertial Odometry (VIO) is a widely used state estimation technique for Uncrewed Aerial Vehicle (UAV) navigation in environments where Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals are unavailable. VIO systems that rely on visual feature tracking are susceptible to performance degradation when operating over surfaces containing repetitive visual textures, where visually similar features can produce ambiguous correspondences that introduce errors into the trajectory estimate. Despite the prevalence of repetitive textures in indoor UAV operating environments such as warehouses, manufacturing facilities, and infrastructure corridors, the specific impact of different repetitive pattern geometries on per-surface VIO accuracy has received limited systematic study, and …

G.W.A.I.H.I.R. Guided Wing Aircraft For Intelligent Hybrid Insertion And Recovery, Abdirahman Ahmed Shirwa, Zach Richards, Derek Harwood, Alex Duncan

Senior Design Project For Engineers

The paper outlines the conceptual and preliminary design of a hybrid vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) heavy lift unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for autonomous cargo transport missions. The primary design objective was to create an aircraft capable of carrying a 15 kg payload over a range of 33 km, achieving a top cruise speed of 45 km/h and maintaining an endurance capacity of at least 90 minutes.

A comprehensive literature review informed key design decision, including airfoil selection, structural material, propulsion system configuration, and control. Key requirements were established early in the design process, such as payload capacity, energy efficiency, …

Determining The Difference In Monthly Hazardous Uas Sightings Pre- And Post-Trust​, Jacob Daniel Anderson, Kyle Beane, Ethan Ryan Prins, Brooke Wheeler

Aeronautics Student Publications

Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs) present a significant challenge to regulators. This study determined that there was no statistically significant difference in monthly UAS sightings before and after the implementation of TRUST.

Implementation Of Path Planning Methods To Detect And Avoid Gps Signal Degradation In Urban Environments, Ayush Raminedi

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

In the modern world, various missions are being carried out under the assistance of autonomous flight vehicles due to their ability to operate in a wide range of flight conditions. Regardless, these autonomous vehicles are prone to GPS signal loss in urban environments due to obstructions that cause scintillation, multi-path, and shadowing. These effects that decrease the GPS functionality can deteriorate the accuracy of GPS positioning causing losses in signal tracking leading to a decrease in navigation performance. These effects are modeled into the simulation environment and are used as part of the path planning algorithm to provide better navigation …

Real-Time Detection Of Sea Turtles Using Uav And Neural Networks On Edge Devices, Jose A. Gonzalez Nunez, Jose G. Gonzalez Nunez, Mustafa I. Akbas, Patrick Currier, Nickolas D. Macchiarella

Journal of Aviation/Aerospace Education & Research

Sea turtle populations continue to diminish around the globe for various reasons. Therefore, the need for innovative solutions to monitor sea turtles has been increasing. This research paper focuses on an innovative application of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) together with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) to improve sea turtle conservation efforts. We outline the design, implementation, and evaluation of a system that deploys UAVs equipped with high-resolution cameras, coupled with a purpose-built neural network to recognize, classify, and monitor sea turtles. This project thus serves as a platform for understanding the wider applicability and limitations of this technology …

A New Trajectory In Uav Safety: Leveraging Reinforcement Learning For Distance Maintenance Under Wind Variations, Xiaolin Xu, Jeffrey Sun

Journal of Aviation/Aerospace Education & Research

In the field of aviation, safety is a critical cornerstone, and the operation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) systems is deeply connected with this principle. A thorough analysis and rigorous simulation and testing of aircraft systems are essential to avoid severe safety hazards. This paper delves into the safety issue in UAV operations, specifically regarding maintaining minimum safety distances under fluctuating wind conditions. The study introduces a novel solution based on a Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG) model, a reinforcement learning method. The DDPG model was trained using a simulated environment created through the Gazebo simulator, with values for wind …

Ground Risk Model For Uavs, Andrew V. Shelley

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

This paper develops an alternative to the ground risk model provided by JARUS SORA. Key inconsistencies in the SORA ground risk model are identified, specifically ground risk continuing to increase when there is no further increase in fatality probability.

Population density is a critical component of UAS ground risk. Definitions of population density adopted by various regulatory jurisdictions are reviewed. A categorisation of population density is developed based on official statistics categories for New Zealand. This categorisation is more granular than that provided by SORA, enabling a more nuanced assessment of risk.

A ground risk model is then developed using …

Enhancing Trajectory-Based Operations For Uavs Through Hexagonal Grid Indexing: A Step Towards 4d Integration Of Utm And Atm, Deepudev Sahadevan Neelakandan, Hannah Al Ali

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

Aviation is expected to face a surge in the number of manned aircraft and drones in the coming years, making it necessary to integrate Unmanned Aircraft System Traffic Management (UTM) into Air Traffic Management (ATM) to ensure safe and efficient operations. This research proposes a novel hexagonal grid-based 4D trajectory representation framework for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) traffic management that overcomes the limitations of existing square/cubic trajectory representation methods. The proposed model employs a hierarchical indexing structure using hexagonal cells, enabling efficient ground based strategic conflict detection and conflict free 4D trajectory planning. Additionally, the use of Hexagonal Discrete Global …

Uav For Medical Equipment Distribution, Richard Barakat, Logan Christensen, Brandon Halebsky, Justin Slavick

Mechanical Engineering

This Final Design Review report documents the senior project participating in the Vertical Flight Society’s 38th Annual Student Design Competition sponsored by The Boeing Company. The goal of this project and competition is to develop an unmanned vertical lift for medical equipment distribution capable of safely delivering a 50 kg payload over distances up to 200 km. This system must be autonomous and have a backup plan to land if any part of the system malfunctions. We discuss the research and justification that drove the selection of the aircraft configuration, a winged quadcopter with a rear propeller. Furthermore, we document …

Can The Timeframe Of Reported Uas Sightings Help Regulators?, Spencer Erik Pitcher, Kelly A. Whealan-George

Beyond: Undergraduate Research Journal

Remotely controlled small aircraft, otherwise known as Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) or drones have started to impact the United States National Airspace System by interfering with the safe flight of aircraft. As the UAS industry continues its expected growth into the future, lawmakers, as well as regulators at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the aviation community must be able to predict when there will be more UAS craft in the air that could cause an interruption to air traffic so that more resources can be allocated optimally to counter the threat of UAS craft. The purpose of this study …

Conceptual Design Of A South Pole Carrier Pigeon Uav, Kendrick M. Dlima

Master's Theses

Currently, the South Pole has a large data problem. It is estimated that 1.2 TB of data is being produced every day, but less than 500 GB of that data is being uploaded via aging satellites to researchers in other parts of the world. This requires those at the South Pole to analyze the data and carefully select the parts to send, possibly missing out on vital scientific information. The South Pole Carrier Pigeon will look to bridge this data gap.

The Carrier Pigeon will be a small unmanned aerial vehicle that will carry a 30 TB solid-state hard drive …

The Impact Of Shadows On Partitioning Of Radiometric Temperature To Canopy And Soil Temperature Based On The Contextual Two-Source Energy Balance Model (Tseb-2t), Mahyar Aboutalebi, Alfonso F. Torres-Rua, Mac Mckee, Hector Nieto, William Kustas, Calvin Coopmans

AggieAir Publications

Tests of the most recent version of the two-source energy balance model have demonstrated that canopy and soil temperatures can be retrieved from high-resolution thermal imagery captured by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). This work has assumed a linear relationship between vegetation indices (VIs) and radiometric temperature in a square grid (i.e., 3.6 m x 3.6 m) that is coarser than the resolution of the imagery acquired by the UAV. In this method, with visible, near infrared (VNIR), and thermal bands available at the same high-resolution, a linear fit can be obtained over the pixels located in a grid, where …

Product Development Process For Small Unmanned Aerial Systems, Jonathan D. Poole

Theses and Dissertations

The DoD has recognized the need for persistent Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) over the last two decades. Recent developments with commercial drones have changed the market structure; there is now a thriving and extensive market base for drone based remote sensing. This research provides system engineering methods to support the DoD use of this burgeoning market to meet operational ISR needs. The three contributions of this research are: a process to support Small Unmanned Aerial Systems (SUAS) design, tools to support the design process, and tools to support risk assessment and reduction for both design and operations. The process …

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 …

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 …

Ten Years Of The Real World Design Challenge, Robert W. Deters, Brent Terwilliger, S.C. Kleinke, Ralph K. Coppola, Jeff Coppola

Publications

Preparing students to be successful in STEM careers is important to foster continued growth in the US and the world. The Real World Design Challenge is a high school design competition focused on the area of aviation. Students work in teams to solve a real world problem using professional tools. The 2018 challenge marks the tenth anniversary of this program. The first students to compete in this competition are now in the work force. This paper describes the background of RWDC, the different challenges that have been used throughout its ten years, the current precision agriculture challenges using UAS, and …

A Novel Approach For Missing Combat Support Aircraft Search Acceleration Using Vtol Uas, Mohammed Ba Zuhair, Wisam Yousef, Issam Samara, Vladislav Varsegov

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

In this paper, an approach to accelerate search operations for a missing combat support aircraft using a portable waterproof autonomous vertical takeoff and landing unmanned aerial system called “flying locator beacon” is described. The latter is connected with both flight data and cockpit voice recorders with a parallel bus and may be deployed from the empennage during extreme emergency scenarios, which is detected when few flight parameters are overrun leading to an air crash stimulating behavior. Landing of the flying locator beacon strictly takes place on global latitude and longitude coordinates only of integer values enabling significant minimization of search …

Detecting And Assessing Collision Potential Of Aircraft And Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (Suas) By Visual Observers, Samuel M. Vance, Ryan J. Wallace, Jon M. Loffi, Jamey D. Jacob, Jared C. Dunlap, Taylor A. Mitchell

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

Visual observers are used to assist the Remote Pilot with maintaining sight of the unmanned aircraft as well as scanning the surrounding airspace for potential collision hazards. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of visual observers in detecting an intruding general aviation aircraft approaching the small unmanned aircraft system (sUAS) operations area. The study sought to determine the effectiveness of sUAS visual observers in detecting a general aviation aircraft collision hazard with a sUAS. Ten participants were asked to perform visual observer duties in support of a sUAS operation. Participants were asked to indicate when they …

X650f Power Solution, Joseph Reed, Joe Lund, Donald Yu, Jessica Iglesias, Daniel Ewell

Aviation Technology Undergraduate Student Research

This poster presents the problem of how that students coming out of the UAV minor and major are not getting enough flight time in the starting courses such as AT 209 and AT 219. Due to this, they are not as prepared as they should be for the higher level courses such as AT 309 and AT 319. Our end goal is to somehow increase the level of flight time in the earlier courses so that they can be prepared and ready for the next level courses.

X650f Power Enhancement, Joseph Reed, Joe Lund, Donald Yu, Jessica Iglesias, Daniel Ewell

Aviation Technology Undergraduate Student Research

This proposal seeks to define the purpose, goals, and scope of the X650F Power Enhancement project. Five members of Purdue’s Aeronautical Engineering Technology program are leading this project as part of their senior capstone research course. The purpose of said project is to look into the many possibilities of enhancing the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) power supply. This can open doors to several opportunities that can benefit both the Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) program here at Purdue University, as well as the all of the students expected to go into the industry. The ideas looked into include, but are not …

Effects Of System Reliability And Time Pressure On Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Operator Performance And Mental Workload, Dahai Liu, Rania Ghatas, Christina Frederick-Recascino, Dennis Vincenzi Ph.D.

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are in the midst of aviation’s next generation. UAVs are being utilized at an increasing rate by military and security operations and are becoming widely popular in usage for activities such as search and rescue and weather research to homeland security and border patrol. In order for a safer integration of UAV’s within the National Airspace System (NAS), many research questions need to be addressed. This study examined the effects of system reliability and time pressure on UAV operator performance and mental workload. Twenty-four undergraduate and graduate students, male and female, from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University participated …

A Post-Accident Analysis Of Civil Remotely-Piloted Aircraft System Accidents And Incidents, Graham Wild, Kellie Gavin, John Murray, Jose Silva, Glenn Baxter

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

A sample of 152 accidents and incidents involving Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems, more commonly referred to as "drones", have been analysed. The data was collected from a 10-year period, 2006 to 2015, conveniently sourced from a limited population owing to the scarcity of reports. Results indicate that safety occurrences involving Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) have a significantly different distribution of contributing factors when sorted into distinct categories. This provides a thorough and up-to-date characterization of the safety deficiencies specific to RPAS. In turn, this contributes to the development of adequate safety management systems applicable to the RPAS sector. The …

Unmanned Aerial Systems (Uas) - What Are They?, Jose R. Ruiz Phd, Mike A. Burgener, Gary Shafer, Jim Peterson Phd, Wayne R. Glass, Steven Goetz

ASA Multidisciplinary Research Symposium

A panel of five aviation experts will discuss Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS). Particular emphasis will be placed on the rules governing UAS operation. A UAS operational demonstration will be conducted.

Seeing The Threat: Pilot Visual Detection Of Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems In Visual Meteorological Conditions, Jon M. Loffi, Ryan J. Wallace, Jamey D. Jacob, Jared C. Dunlap

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

One key challenge of integrating Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) platforms into the National Airspace System (NAS) is the potential for midair collisions between manned aircraft and the unmanned system. The lack of an established UAS benchmark for Detect, Sense & Avoid Systems put the preponderance of avoidance efforts on manned aircraft pilots to visually see and avoid potential collision threats. The small size, unusual configurations, and diverse operational applications of unmanned systems make UAS platforms difficult to visually identify. This paper sought to determine the mean visibility distance of small UAS systems (sUAS) to an alerted pilot flying a general …

Exploring Civil Drone Accidents And Incidents To Help Prevent Potential Air Disasters, Graham Wild, John Murray, Glenn Baxter

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

A recent alleged “drone” collision with a British Airways Airbus A320 at Heathrow Airport highlighted the need to understand civil Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) accidents and incidents (events). This understanding will facilitate improvements in safety by ensuring efforts are focused to reduce the greatest risks. One hundred and fifty two RPAS events were analyzed. The data was collected from a 10-year period (2006 to 2015). Results show that, in contrast to commercial air transportation (CAT), RPAS events have a significantly different distribution when categorized by occurrence type, phase of flight, and safety issue. Specifically, it was found that RPAS …

Examining American Attitudes On The Use Of Military Drones, Todd Brandon

Political Science Theses and Capstones

Recent polls have revealed that Americans of both the political left and right support the use of military drones. This statement stands true among groups who traditionally do not support the use of military force. I hypothesize that people of a more liberal persuasion will be more concerned with whether or not the drone program endangers innocent civilians, while those of a more conservative view will be more concerned with the legality of conducting military drone strikes. I analyze data obtained from the Pew Research Center to examine people's attitudes on military drone strikes via framing theory. My hypothesis has …

Wide-Scale Small Unmanned Aircraft System Access To The National Airspace System, John Robbins, Brent Terwilliger, David Ison, Dennis Vincenzi

Publications

Expected revisions of federal policies and regulations for the operation and certification of small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) are anticipated to significantly increase the volume of traffic in the National Airspace System (NAS). By investigating critical needs of regulatory compliance and safety, as well as new advancements, it may be possible to identify strategies to address the most pressing concerns of sUAS integration. Findings and recommendations from this research are presented to highlight implications and possible solutions to urgent needs of UAS stakehold-ers, including industry, government, and academia.

The Effects Of Rewards On The Ability Of An Autonomous Uav Controlled By A Reinforcement Learning Agent To Accomplish A Target Localization Task, Hemali Dinesh Virani

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

The need for Unmanned Aerial System (UASs) is increasing in the fields of science, security, military and others. With an increasing number of challenges faced by mankind the need for system with advance autonomous and intelligent capabilities is growing rapidly. The required intelligent behavior can be achieved in an unmanned system with machine learning methods such as Reinforcement Learning (RL) theory. This theory presents algorithms which have the capability to learn how to adapt to its environment. Using RL methods, autonomous systems have the ability to use past experiences to improve future mission performance. In this research, the effects of …