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air traffic control
sense and avoid
command + control
scenarios
safety
accidents
reliability
automation
all weather
test sites
environment
terrorism
Reliability
The Northrop Grumman “Global Hawk”
- from http://www.northropgrumman.com/unmanned/
- Prototypes to be operated under Harsh Environment Test conditions, to encourage any design weaknesses to manifest themselves at an early stage.
- Detailed and ongoing in-flight tests need to be instituted, accumulating many hours of flight time, to identify failure modes and guide preventative maintenance.
- In a mission, several UAVs need to be used, to ensure there is always a back up, should any UAV experience any problems and need to return to base.
- Adopt a modular design approach, in which aircraft modules (engine, fuel tank, wing, navigation and flight control modules) and payloads can easily be changed.
- Design the engine unit to contribute minimal stresses to the airframe.
- The engine should be a low vibration engine to reduce stresses on the airframe and payload.
- The UAV should have two or more engiines.
- The UAV should have multiple, electrically isolated engines, control surfaces and electronics to ensure backup, should any system fail in flight.
The EADS DRAC UAV, developed for the French military, is an example of a twin engined UAV.
complete with a swivel camera
and foldable propellers,driven by electric motors. All photographs from the EADS stand at the Dubai 2007 Air Show.
UAV Mishap Rates decreasing with time as a result of experience
From uav_roadmap2005.pdf.
From the DoD UAV Roadmap. From www.uavforum.com (link no longer exists) uav_roadmap.pdf.
from uav_roadmap2005.pdf
Causes of failure averaged over all UAVs, from uav_roadmap2005.pdf
Data from USA Today, 28th March 2007
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