Blogs

This is the first post in a series about my work to develop a system to help reduce interactions between unmanned and manned (UAV2MAN) and unmanned to unmanned (UAV2UAV) interactions. This project is supported by Loughborough University and by FLARM technology, with the objective of producing a system that allows UAVs to avoid interactions that could result in potential collisions with other aircraft.

I thought that DIYDrones would be the best community to share this project with, due to the shear amount of experience and insight I know exists in this community.

All posts in this series will be prefixed ICAA (Interaction control for autonomous aircraft). All the original posts will be on my blog on LinkedIn

This post should provide a bit of background on what I'm trying to achieve, and why I think it's needed.

With the likes of Amazon and DHL both wanting to start nationwide Drone delivery services, the encroachment of unmanned aircraft into civil airspace in the UK will increase, as will the chance of unwanted interaction with "regular" manned aircraft.

Whilst I fully support and encourage these developments, the interactions have to potential to produce outcomes, making it increasingly vital to manage them properly. There are a number of ways of managing this in regular aircraft already in existence, from Radar to analog signal strength based transmission. Unforetunatley, many of these traditional systems, being geared for full sized aircraft, have extreme weight and power penalties.

Unmanned aircraft aren't the first type of aircraft to have this issue though. Gliding has become an increasingly popular sport in Europe, with aircraft commonly flying in close proximity (<30m) in large numbers when thermalling. Keeping track of 10 other aircraft, all moving at different speeds at different positions in the thermal whilst attempting to stay in the thermal yourself can challenge the spatial awareness of even the best pilot.

Enter Flarm, a system developed by 3 engineers from ETH Zurich, which provides many of the benefits of a traditional transponder system, but in a smaller, lighter more energy efficient package. For the last 15 years, Flarm has become increased in range, and can calculate the chance of a collision not just based on where you are going now, but where you could be. It has already been fitted to over 25,000 aircraft, and has EASA approval. It's a fantastic system, and I thought it could provide an excellent basis for a collision avoidance system in unmanned aircraft.

I approached Flarm about this proposal just over a week ago, and they have very kindly agreed to support this project over the coming months. There are a range of reasons I want to integrate Flarm as opposed to an alternative system, the other obvious one being computer vision, but I will be discussing that in my next post.

Thanks for reading :)