scholarly journals An Exploratory Investigation of UAS Regulations in Europe and the Impact on Effective Use and Economic Potential

Drones ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
Ahmed Alamouri ◽  
Astrid Lampert ◽  
Markus Gerke

Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) have rapidly become more common in various applications. At the same time, the need for a safe UAS operation is of great importance to minimize and avoid risks that could arise with the deployment of this technology. With these requirements, UAS regulators in the European Union (EU) are making large efforts to enable a reliable legal framework of conditions for UAS operation to keep up with new capabilities of this technology and to minimize the risk of property damage and, most importantly, human injury. A recent outcome of the mentioned efforts is that new EU drone regulations are into force since 1 January 2021. In this paper we aim to provide a sound overview of recent EU drone regulations and the main changes to the rules since the first wave of regulations adopted in 2017. We highlight how such new rules help or hinder the use of UAS technology and its economic potential in scientific and commercial sectors by providing an exploratory investigation of UAS legal frames in Europe. An example of the impact of legislation on the operation of one particular UAS in Germany is provided, which has been in use since 2013 for atmospheric research.

Author(s):  
Abhinav Saxena ◽  
Indranil Roychoudhury ◽  
Christian Neukom ◽  
Greg Pisanich ◽  
Alex Huang ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Carsten Christensen ◽  
John Salmon

The increasing proliferation of small unmanned aircraft systems (sUASs) is forcing a paradigm shift in military doctrine surrounding counter-sUAS and sUAS deployment tactics. This work describes an agent-based model that incorporates established infantry small unit tactics with the ability to deploy sUASs to aid in surveillance and indirect fire targeting. The model is based on current military doctrine and real warfighter experiences and is presented as a foundation from which additional simulation capabilities and analyses may be created. A series of randomly generated situations sets a defending force with the potential to have sUAS capabilities against a superior attacking force without sUAS capabilities. A control case considers defenders without sUAS capabilities. In six experimental cases, defending forces deploy a single sUAS in one of six patrol patterns as a surveillance and indirect fire targeting tool. Subsequent analysis reveals that sUASs generally increase the odds of defender survival during an engagement and that short-range, concentrated patrol patterns lead to higher odds of defender survival and increased indirect fire opportunities. A battery of analyses showcase the model’s capabilities in terms of exploring novel sUAS implementation strategies and illustrating the impact of those strategies over a range of combat effectiveness metrics.


2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (8) ◽  
pp. 1687-1699 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam L. Houston ◽  
Jason M. Keeler

AbstractThe objective of the research presented is to assess the impact of sensor response and aircraft airspeed on the accuracy of in situ observations collected by small unmanned aircraft systems profiling the convective boundary layer or transecting airmass boundaries. Estimates are made using simulated aircraft flown within large-eddy simulations. Both instantaneous errors (differences between observed temperature, which include the effects of sensor response and airspeed, and actual temperature) and errors in representation (differences between serial observations and representative snapshots of the atmospheric state) are considered. Synthetic data are retrieved assuming a well-aspirated first-order sensor mounted on rotary-wing aircraft operated as profilers in a simulated CBL and fixed-wing aircraft operated through transects across a simulated airmass boundary. Instantaneous errors are found to scale directly with sensor response time and airspeed for both CBL and airmass boundary experiments. Maximum errors tend to be larger for airmass boundary transects compared to the CBL profiles. Instantaneous errors for rotary-wing aircraft profiles in the CBL simulated for this work are attributable to the background lapse rate and not to turbulent temperature perturbations. For airmass boundary flights, representation accuracy is found to degrade with decreasing airspeed. This signal is most pronounced for flights that encounter the density current wake. When representation errors also include instantaneous errors resulting from sensor response, instantaneous errors are found to be dominant for flights that remain below the turbulent wake. However, for flights that encounter the wake, sensor response times generally need to exceed ~5 s before instantaneous errors become larger than errors in representation.


2013 ◽  
Vol 66 (5) ◽  
pp. 719-735 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Brooker

Civil and military unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) operations are currently subject to restrictions that put major limits on their use of airspace. There is considerable debate about how to develop the safe, secure and efficient integration of UAS into non-segregated airspace and aerodromes. This paper examines a necessary safety aspect. Airlines and their passengers would obviously ask, “Is it still safe with all these unmanned aircraft around?” The spotlight must be on Air Traffic Control Systems as High Reliability Organizations (HRO). That status comes from industry characteristics: focus on safety, effective use of technological improvements, learning from feedback from accidents/incidents, and an underpinning safety culture. The safety of ATC Systems has improved dramatically: accidents are now the product of rare and complex ‘messes’ of multiple failures. It is therefore a major challenge to preserve the HRO status by ensuring at least current safety performance. The analysis sketches feasible processes of policy decision-making and safety analyses. Key factors are policies on UAS equipage and airspace usage, implementation of a Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System (TCAS)-variant appropriate for UAS, use of an ‘Equivalent Level of Safety’ philosophy, small datalink latencies, proven HRO safety and learning cultures, and stress testing of system resilience by real-time simulations.


Drones ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 141
Author(s):  
Carol Martinez ◽  
Pedro J. Sanchez-Cuevas ◽  
Simos Gerasimou ◽  
Abhishek Bera ◽  
Miguel A. Olivares-Mendez

Deploying Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) in safety- and business-critical operations requires demonstrating compliance with applicable regulations and a comprehensive understanding of the residual risk associated with the UAS operation. To support these activities and enable the safe deployment of UAS into civil airspace, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has established a UAS regulatory framework that mandates the execution of safety risk assessment for UAS operations in order to gain authorization to carry out certain types of operations. Driven by this framework, the Joint Authorities for Rulemaking on Unmanned Systems (JARUS) released the Specific Operation Risk Assessment (SORA) methodology that guides the systematic risk assessment for UAS operations. However, existing work on SORA and its applications focuses mainly on single UAS operations, offering limited support for assuring operations conducted with multiple UAS and with autonomous features. Therefore, the work presented in this paper analyzes the application of SORA for a Multi-UAS airframe inspection (AFI) operation, that involves deploying multiple UAS with autonomous features inside an airport. We present the decision-making process of each SORA step and its application to a multiple UAS scenario. The results shows that the procedures and safety features included in the Multi-AFI operation such as workspace segmentation, the independent multi-UAS AFI crew proposed, and the mitigation actions provide confidence that the operation can be conducted safely and can receive a positive evaluation from the competent authorities. We also present our key findings from the application of SORA and discuss how it can be extended to better support multi-UAS operations.


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