UAS Human Factors

     Aeronautical Decision Making (ADM) and risk management are important skills in both manned and unmanned aviation.  ADM looks at aviation from multiple angles.  The flight does not just occur from takeoff until landing.  It actually involves a much more thorough investigation.  Before the flight occurs every potential hazard must be evaluated for the flight.  This occurs through a risk management process.  Using deliberate operational risk management (ORM), a pilot will review every potential hazard for the flight.  This will include, but is not limited to, personal factors, environmentals, and mission risks.  After identifying all potential hazards and assessing the risk, the pilot must determine the best way to reduce the risk.     Two large risks that stand out to me for ADM and risk management are pilots crew rest/day scheduling and the utilizing sensors instead of see and avoid.  Since the pilot is always on ...

    With increasing need for better transportation capabilities around the world Urban Air Mobility (UAM) is becoming an important technological improvement.  For UAM to be successful, a new airspace structure must be created for the National Airspace System (NAS).  Currently, the NAS operates under see and avoid doctrine and radar.  UAS have a disadvantage because they are unable to operate under see and avoid doctrine.  The greatest challenge to incorporating UAS in the NAS is determining a doctrine that allows for deconfliction between UAS assets. The FAA has a few initiatives that are helping improve this system.       NextGen is a new FAA system that uses multiple technologies to keep 3 dimensional location on aircraft. This is extremely important when manned and unmanned aircraft are operating in the same airspace. NextGen helps to develop communications between ground control stations, humans, and UAS to provide safe,...

               This week, the ERAU Virtual Hub was utilized to determine the best UAS design to fly and investigate a plane crash off of a runway.   To complete this mission, the UAS needed to be able to hover close enough to the crash that a detailed study could be done.   This UAS was then evaluated on its’ ability to perform the mission.   The first step was to determine the UAS.   The UAS has four main components, including the Ground Control Station (GCS), airframe, power plant, power, and payload.     Both a fixed wing aircraft and Octorotor were evaluated.   While working from the virtual GCS, I was able to determine the following information. Airframe Power Plant Power Payload GCS Ranking: Condor Octorotor X8 Black Electric ERA Powerhouse 10000 LIDAR, Synthetic Aperture RADAR, IMU GPS, Compass, ...

When people used to think of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) in the past few decades, military drones and expensive cinematic drones for movies came to mind.  Nowadays, there is a far greater access to UAS across the civilian sector.  People can order small UAS from Amazon and other large box stores and learn to fly them.   With easier access comes higher potential for risk.  A risk-adverse society fears the potential of UAS crashing into manned aircraft or populated areas on the ground (Clothier, R.A., Greer, D.A., Greer, D.G., & Mehta, A.M., p. 1168).  This risk perception is the “physical signals and/or information about potential hazards and risks associated with technology and the formation of judgement about the seriousness, likelihood, and acceptability” (Clothier et. al, p. 1168).   These risks have a deep connection with Human Factors that can be both positive and negative. When there are positive human factors with UAS, there ar...