Aeronautics and Aerospace UAS

In today’s aviation world, pilot jobs requirements are seeing a shift from manual flight to primarily crew resource management. Especially in the UAS industry, pilots are no longer mainly involved or primarily focused on keeping the aircraft in the air via manual controls but focusing on the mission and the tasks at hand to achieve the mission with the crew members collective responsibilities.     CRM skills are one of the most important factors for UAS operators. According to Ruff-Stahl et al. (2016), eliminating pilots entirely from an aircraft mission is highly inefficient due to the loss of CRM skills provided by pilots.   When it comes to size and capability of UAS requiring certain operator and training qualifications, the complexity of the UAS design needs to be taken into consideration. The Human Systems Integration (HSI) plays a big role in how the human interacts with system elements effecting performance and safety (Pagan, Astwood, & Phillips, 2015). There ...

     When examining aviation operations, both manned and unmanned, the risks and hazards do not stray that far from each other. The list of risks and hazards is quite extensive when including all possible general and/or specific risks present in the aviation industry. A few interconnected risks and hazards that exist for both manned and unmanned aviation alike include airspace separation, sustainable communications, as well as human factor issues. Airspace separation includes detect and avoid risks as well as integrations of new aircraft types into the NAS such as UAS and urban air mobility (UAM) technologies. The human factors may vary between the two aviation categories, but human factors in general will remain a constant issue. The more specific human factor hazards include human/ automation interaction which can involve active failures that can lead to accidents and a range of unsafe acts (Glussich & Histon, 2010). Additional risks and hazards include latent failu...

When discussing the interesting yet sensitive topic of automation in UAS, one must first understand that automation does not have to be an all or nothing approach. There are varying levels of automation that can be implemented in a system from minor to major with plenty of options in between. Diving into automation research, it can be devised that there are two categories of automation: static automation and adaptive automation.     Static automation is considered “hard-wired into the system” by way of the designer making the decisions as to whom or how a task should be performed (Marshall et al., 2011). In static UAS automation all decisions are made within the design of the system allowing for overriding of automation. Static automation could be called traditional automation. Adaptive automation is considered to be summoned by an operator event such as workload or situational event such as takeoff speed (Marshall et al., 2011).   As previously mentioned about autonomy n...

When considering taking medications in an aviation protocols in place, there are several determining factors that are involved to decide whether or not a mission should be flown. Manned aircraft pilots as well as UAS pilots experience similar limitations and cautions as it pertains to medications because the risks are great if not taken seriously. There are many physiological factors that affect pilot performance and those can include stress, fatigue, and drugs consumption. Anything that limits the pilot’s faculties and decision-making skills is considered detrimental to operations.    When examining UAS pilot’s levels of decision-making requirements, complexity in tasks, and skill set necessary to perform missions, one could argue that the over-the-counter OTC medications that pose the most significant risk to UAS pilots would be antihistamines and/or decongestants due to their potential to cause cognitive deficits. Now I will argue that decongestants are on the approved list...

Aeronautical decision-making (ADM) is the systematic approach to problem solving consistently given a defined set of circumstances and with all information that is provided to the pilot at the time. In other words, ADM allows pilots to transition through the decision-making process in a consistent way in order to determine the best course of action. Having good common sense is a very general way of saying someone has good ADM skills, but it really goes much further. In order to have good decision-making skills, one must do a fair amount of self-reflecting. This self-reflection includes identifying personal attitudes or behaviors that could be potentially hazardous to flight as well as recognizing one’s own stress level and how to cope. Risk assessment skills also can play a big role in ADM by the pilot identifying safety-related hazards and how to mitigate said hazards which has an entire process of analysis on its own in addition to the full ADM process.     The most int...

Urban Air Mobility (UAM) is an active industry concept that is being pursued by several global companies. The general scope is to design an aircraft, both manned and unmanned, that will have the capabilities, efficiency qualities, as well as meeting safety standards that can transport a small number of passengers within urban areas to cut back on gridlock vehicle traffic and commute times. The air taxi market is expected to be launched in the near future, some companies project 2023 launch, that allows for these air transportation systems to reduce travel time as well as pollution by using electric power train designs.    Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) traffic management (UTM) is an air traffic management network that is expected to provide management capabilities for uncontrolled operations, in particular UAS. The FAA, NASA, and industry leaders have been researching plans to implement such an ecosystem that will allow UAS traffic to operate safely in the airspace with other...

This was my first time working with The Hub application created by ERAU for design and testing of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). I found the system to be highly entertaining and relatively user friendly. What I found most challenging was the knowledge base on UAS designs themselves. I was making selections that others would probably have laughed at. However, I did come up with several modified designs, some that were successful and others that were not. During this trial I stuck with one model so I could make adjustments and compare those adjustments with previous designs in attempt to tweak it to perfection. Perfection was far from achieved but the system was still great to work with.    The most successful design was a Tern fixed-wing UAS and a man portable ground control station (GCS). When making these selections, the system was very user friendly and allowing the engineer to make selections and adjustments while providing an up to date calculation of the effect of those...

Unmanned aircraft system (UAS) impact on legacy aeronautics is a rapidly growing focus for not only the simple reason of navigating the increased activity in the airspace but also combating safety issues for aircraft, pilots, and civilians. Human factors in manned aviation have been constantly researched and studied for years in order to decrease accidents and incidents in the airspace and one could argue has been successfully done. Introducing unmanned aircraft into this system poses concern as the human factors for unmanned aircraft can be drastically different than those for manned aircraft therefore contributing organizations to the integration are having to start, in some ways, from scratch to examine UAS human factor issues.    UAS human factors more commonly known can include reduction of sensory cues, the reliance of automation, as well as transfer of control during operations. My research has just begun to a certain extent, but I have also been briefly exposed to the ...