From New Scientist (via SAUSNews), a report on the fatal UAV accident in South Korea last week:
In a statement supplied to New Scientist, Schiebel says its Camcopter S-100 drone, a 150-kilogram rotorcraft capable of 220 km/h flight, should have coped in any case because GPS can be lost for many reasons, such as an inability to access the positioning satellites due to obstruction by high buildings. The Camcopter has multiple inertial measurement units that “allow safe operation and recovery in the absence of GPS signals” the firm says.
“All information recovered to date indicates that after a loss of GPS signals to the aircraft’s receivers incorrect handling and omissions over a time period of a number of minutes, resulted in an unfortunate chain of events that ultimately led to the crash,” the statement says. Emergency procedures “to ensure a safe recovery in such a situation” do not appear to have been “correctly and adequately followed” it alleges.
The Schiebel aviation engineer who died – a 50-year-old Slovakian with much experience of the technology – was assisting two remote pilots working for one of Schiebel’s South Korean partners. He was not in control of the aircraft, the firm says. It’s thought the Camcopter was being tested for new duties in border operations.
The accident aircraft had been used by the South Korean authorities since 2008 to police major events – such as the 2010 G20 summit in Seoul, says a Schiebel spokesperson.
Comments
Does anyone know how much speed the Schiebel S100 helicopter main rotor wing
Ouch!
When The GPS started to wander we were receiving 10 sats The guys from Avionics figured it was When old sats went down and new ones came up being close to the buildings and stationary there was refraction off the buildings . Myself I think they became complacent . They had a fully operational system since 2008 they just put the drone out side the van marked it as ground zero and took off the guy running it made it look easy . on the way back there could have been a bit of "PCS" (Princess Concordia Syndrome) one of the o the guys might of said "Hey let me try ?" He switched to manual and puts it into the wall.
Navigation aid, GPS being of one among others, is not concerned by aircraft piloting.
Aircraft piloting, or vector management, apparently assisted from the ground.
All kind of aircrafts were already flying well before GPS became available.
Talking about GPS failure to explain a crash is like hurting a tree because of a bad map.
This is just a sad reminder that GPS on our small UAS is not a guarantee against bad piloting and bad trajectory.
There is more to this, Paul and I are hard on the trail.
Ellison, Agreed. Taking from what John wrote and what was written in the article maybe a remote pilot was trying to RTL. I wonder if we'll ever get more data from this tragedy?
I say the safest thing that a craft capable of hovering should do in case of GPS loss is to do just that, HOVER. No RTL/RTH, not even landing, since you don't know what's under the craft at the time. The landing should be done under IMU stabilization, under manual pilot control, whenever it is deemed safe.
This is just a polite way of saying that a human messed up, and sadly they payed the ultimate price.
I was telling Gary Mortimer last week I remember many times sitting stationary on the tarmac in different big planes with the electronics running by the buildings the VOR DME and the Loran would be right on after awhile the GPS - DME although it was still working and receiving a signal would start" hunting"trying to find it's self? floating all over the place showing us 50 to 150 feet from our position . As soon as we started to move the GPS would straighten up and work fine. GPS doesn't show you where you are but where you have been . You have to be moving for it to work effectively . You move it updates,you are always "just ahead " of your position You remain stationary long enough it will start to wander . If those guys had the drone hoovering stationary 20 feet away outside the van near buildings relying on GPS for position any length of time it is a recipe for disaster . Even with a alternate source of guidance they were manovering to close it would take just a puff of wind. The van looks like it got hit from something out of "Robo Cop" Sad some one died .They need to extend their "Buffer Zone "
Oh! Is that what happened? I hate it when that happens! Who woke those guys up, anyway? Must be because of global warming. They finally thawed out. Still it can't have been any fun to land your UAV on your own vehicle!
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