Civil UAVs Still A Distant Prospect

holy_calamity writes "The aerospace industry has failed to obtain the radio frequencies that would allow the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in civil airspace, New Scientist reports. It will be 2011 before it can even begin to lobby for space on the radio spectrum. What's more, no national aviation authority in the world will allow civil UAVs without a system for avoiding other aircraft. And no firm has even started development of one. Has the industry cheated us of the benefits of civil UAVs by focussing on the demands of the military?" From the article: "On the brighter side, last week the UN's International Civil Aviation Organization, based in Montreal, Canada, said its navigation experts would meet in early 2007 to consider regulations for UAVs in civil airspace. That could be a step towards internationally agreed rules for how UAVs should operate. Even if the UN body makes rapid progress, however, it will be meaningless unless the industry can obtain the necessary frequencies to control the planes and feed images and other sensor data back to base."

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)

[ackthpt]

Note to article submitters and editors: In the first use of an initialism or acronym it is good practice to write out in long form the title or phrase preceding the initialism or acronym, so the reader will know what you are talking about throughout an article without having to stop reading and go look it up.

Otherwise you're mimmicking the drone who hides their lack of a real job or knowledge behind obfuscation.

It's Not Time Yet

[dch24]

Like most really interesting technologies, Civil UAVs are a solution looking for a problem right now. There are a few really good applications that mostly law enforcement are looking at:

• Fighting fires, especially at night (current FAA regs prevent piloted aircraft from flying into fires at night)
• Mobile perimeter surveillance

However, having worked in the UAV industry for the past five years, it's pretty apparent that the current solutions are still pricey. I remember seeing an article about the LAPD launching a UAV initiative for surveillance.

The technology is advancing and prices are dropping, but it's not time yet. Watch companies like Aerovironment [aerovironment.com] and the normal defense contractors (Northrop Grumman, Lockheed, General Atomics, etc.) for future developments.

(Full disclosure: I don't work for any of these companies, and I don't plan on investing in them.)

Model planes are illegal?

[b0s0z0ku]

Granted, they can only be flown in *uncontrolled* airspace by law, but that's still civil airspace.

-b.

Not a chance they could be FAA approved anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

I test UAVs for a living, and while this article may be true, there's much more to the story. UAVs, as they are currently designed, are 50-100 time more unsafe than military vehicles, and thousands of times more unsafe than commercial airliners (these numbers taken from Office of the Secretary of Defense report and white papers on the subject). The avionic computers they use are cheaper and less redundant than commercial aircraft by a large margin, and would not come close to meeting FAA standards. In addition, they require a large amount more of flight critical control software, all of which needs to be FAA certified also, and that takes a lot of time, test, and money. Bottom line is that don't hold your breath for civil UAV's, and go home and sleep soundly knowing you don't have to worry about unmanned air vehicles landing on your house overnight.

Re:It's Not Time Yet

[arpad1]

There a couple of other possibilities:

• agriculture - Yamaha's been selling the RMAX [strategypage.com] for 18 years for crop-dusting. Surveying growing crops from the air for signs of insect infestations allows for early, effective and minimal application of pesticides.
• utilities - power companies run regular surveys of their lines, some by air, some from the ground but it's always expensive human beings who have to use their personal eyeballs.
• search and rescue -
• police surveillance - now done by manned helicopter and very expensively. Related but not exactly the same as the previous usage.
• post-catastrophe assessment - after a hurricane or earthquake one big problem is finding the places that need the aid the most. The life and property toll can be reduced if the rescue personnel know which roads are passable and which aren't and which areas need them the most. UAV's might also be useful as communications access points in a post-catastrophe situation.
• flying weather stations - there are a couple of UAV's who's claim to fame is their endurance. The first UAV to fly the Atlantic [insitu.com] managed the trick in 1992. Have them buzzing around where it's difficult, dangerous, expensive for people to do gathering data not accessible by satellites.

There's more but why go on? The point's made. Thing is, all the tasks I listed are doable with current technology. I don't think the list will shrink as the technology improves.

Re:Bad idea, No Biscuit for you!

[sponga]

No more like L.A.P.D./Long Beach Helicopter Police like you usually get with a response time of a couple minutes or so; you should really just sit out one night on Signal Hill and watch the lights chase suspects through the neighborhoods and give lighting or use night vision for officers in dark areas.

A matter of scale

[erice]

Not the greatest link but, excerpted from http://iagblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/faa-vs-la-sher iff.html [blogspot.com]

"For RC aircraft flight, the A/C must stay lower than 400 feet AGL (FAA Advisory circular 91-57), and according to the Associationof Model Aricraft's safety code, must stay in the control of, and stay within the sight of,an operator at all times. Autonomous flight is forbidden."

It wouldn't surprise me if there wasn't a size limitation as well.

Re:Waitaminute...

[massivefoot]

I appreciate how you can think that this would be the case, but I would disagree. I'm a pilot in the UK, and did my training near Manchester, which isn't exactly known for its clear weather, so this may be a worst case scenario, but an aircraft is not necessarilly an easy object to see on a slightly hazy day. Whether you're looking towards the sun or not can make things far worse.

You would need a relatively high resolution camera to be able to make out aircraft at any reasonable distance. The UAV would also require (assuming it is autonomous) software processing to identify objects as aircraft, and assertain information such as type and velocity. Also remember that aircraft often have a large number of sources of vibration, so backups of most systems would be wise. You would also have to devise a seperate system for interaction with air traffic control, who have a stressful enough job as it is.

What concerns me most, however, is the possibility of an engine failure. Civil aviation practically assumes that your engine will fail (you have to be able to glide clear of a built up area with an engine failure, and my instructor would always ask me during circuits "ok, where would you go if the engine failed right now?"). With a UAV, an engine failure will probably require it to act autonomously (straight line radio transmissions would be unreliable at low altittude, satellite relay would have some lag). This requires software that can identify the wind direction near the ground (not too hard), identify a suitable field for landing (would possibly need a colour camera), evaluate the risk to others (identity humans, livestock, buildings in the vicinity) and actually perform a landing in a field of unknown altittude and pitch. Whilst I'm prepared to believe software can be written to perform such a task, I would have concerns regarding its reliability. Actually, I would suggest that a better idea would be to bring the aircraft down into a low velocity 'crash' into a safe area, rather than trying to land it intact.

Civil UAVs

[CompMD]

I work for a very well known aircraft design and consulting firm in the US. We have worked on numerous civilan UAVs. Personally, I have been a design reviewer for two UAV programs, performed engine testing for another program, and am currently coordinating flight test for another. Let me tell you a few things from the perspective of someone in the business.

The Yamaha RMAX (mentioned in the article) is a nifty helicopter. It uses a water cooled engine, has composite body shell, airframe, and rotor blades, and a nice onboard computer called YACS. Recently, a nearby company in collaboration with the local university installed a third party autopilot system that interface with the YACS and a ground station controller. The RMAX had first autonomous flight at a remote Air National Guard range and was successful. The 150 meter range restriction placed on the helicopter has very little to do with its performance; the RMAX can easily fly much farther and higher. Some useful applications for an RMAX in the US would be for highway traffic monitoring in busy cities ($150,000 UAV vs. several million dollar Bell 206), search and rescue, surveillance, and low cost aerial photography.

Aircraft can avoid each other, contrary to what the article states. Other users have mentioned TCAS, which warns a pilot when he is too close to another aircraft. The system interfaces with the aircraft's transponder and flight control system to decide what course correction should be made. For two aircraft approaching each other, opposite instructions will be given to the pilots so they fly away from each other. In a UAV, a system like this can be easily modified to simply command the flight control system to change course. In coordination with sense-and-avoid systems (RADAR), terrain avoidance, and other aircraft transponders, a safe automatic flight control system can be made for UAVs.

The technology for UAVs is young, and the equipment being used in many UAVs is not up to par because the only regulation is "you can't fly UAVs." Commercial airliners have triple redundancy for flight critical systems. If you think you have a rat's nest of cabling in your server rooms, you've never seen the wiring in a jet. Even a business jet has a enormous quantity of wires running through it. The reason for so much redundancy is very simple: if aircraft systems fail, people die. Death is generally bad. Since there is nobody onboard UAVs, the same redundancy is rarely installed. I have not worked with a single UAV that has any sort of redundancy for flight critical systems. Now, I'm not saying all UAVs are this way; the GlobalHawk is most certainly well equipped with redundant systems. Because the manufacturing cost of UAVs is so much lower than manned aircraft, many are considered expendable. The maintenance costs of manned aircraft are very large, and for some aircraft, those costs can eclipse the acquisition price very quickly.

There are many people involved in working with industry and the government to get UAVs flying in the US. Standard and regulations need to be formed, and I know several folks involved with that. Take a look at RTCA Special Committe 203 (SC203 Unmanned Aircraft Systems [rtca.org]). Also look at groups like the Kansas UAV Consortium [kansasuav.org]. They are comprised of industry, academia, government, and military partners dedicated to promoting UAV operations in Kansas and the US.

The UAVs flying today are rather impressive. In October I was an exhibitor at the Unmanned Aerial Systems/Future Systems Symposium [salair.org]. There were demonstrations of the Aerovironment Raven and AAI Shadow 200 UAVs. Both the Raven and Shadow demonstrated very good flying qualities. The Shadow even performed a flawless landing on a dirt runway.

Safety issues will be solved. If you're worried about the safety about civil UAVs when they get here, you aren't

They are already flying over the USA

[ruthzine]

http://www.flightglobal.com/Articles/2006/11/28/Na vigation/177/210809/USAF+starts+routine+flights+ov er+USA+of+Global+Hawk+UAV,+following+completion+of +Block+10.html [flightglobal.com]