UWE has obtained warranties from all depositors as to their title in the material deposited and as to their right to deposit such material.

Transcription

1 Wright, S. (2016) Drone avionics. In: Environmental and Safety Assurance Symposium 2016, MOD Abbey Wood, Bristol, UK, Jun Environmental and Safety Assurance Symposium 2016: UNSPECIFIED Available from: We recommend you cite the published version. The publisher s URL is: Refereed: No (no note) Disclaimer UWE has obtained warranties from all depositors as to their title in the material deposited and as to their right to deposit such material. UWE makes no representation or warranties of commercial utility, title, or fitness for a particular purpose or any other warranty, express or implied in respect of any material deposited. UWE makes no representation that the use of the materials will not infringe any patent, copyright, trademark or other property or proprietary rights. UWE accepts no liability for any infringement of intellectual property rights in any material deposited but will remove such material from public view pending investigation in the event of an allegation of any such infringement. PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR TEXT.

2 Dr. Steve Wright Drone Avionics Senior Lecturer, Avionics and Aircraft Systems Department of Engineering, Design and Mathematics

3 Steve Wright Rolls-Royce STMicroelectronics Airbus University of Bristol University of West of England 2014-

4 Conventional Drones Bae Systems Taranis General Atomics Predator AeroVironment Puma

5 Consumer/Prosumer Drones DJI Inspire Parrot AR.Drone JRCC H2O

6 System Components Telemetry Sensing Ground control Actuation Autopilot

7 Revolution by Evolution No fundamental breakthroughs Multiple technologies have evolved along their performance/cost curves Converged to enable system-level breakthrough

8 Enabling Technologies 32-bit microprocessors 6-axis accelerometers Barometers GPS Open-source software Digital telemetry links Cameras Displays Batteries

9 Hardware Standard platforms: Pixhawk ArduPilot Mega e.g. Pixhawk - ARM Cortex A8 - Single core - 1GHz - 32 bit - 256Mb RAM - 2Mb Flash - 65nm Telemetry links: - Wifi - Bluetooth - Proprietary ( 3DR )

10 Software Operating systems: Linux, FreeRTOS Languages: C, C#... Airborne software: PX4 Ardupilot Cleanflight Ground software: Mission Planner QGroundControl Tools: GCC, Visual Studio

11 Power Lithium-Polymer batteries, 8000mA-hours at 11.7V Power-switching electronic controllers High-torque brushless motors

12 Avionics Comparison Predator avionics is a de-costed Eurofighter AR.Drone avionics is de-costed iphone, or an enhanced Raspberry Pi

13 Emerging Standards Un-organised standards are leading to system interoperability Control protocols: e.g. MAVLink Airborne software: e.g. ArduPilot Organizations: e.g. DroneCode consortium

14 Weaknesses Speed (<100 knots) Range (<10 km) Endurance (<2 hours) Payload (<10 kg) Cyber-security

15 Weaknesses: Reliability Inexperienced/reckless operators (this is an avionics issue) Fundamental lack of resilience in airframes Flaky code Consumer electronics (e.g. EM Susceptibility) Simplex architectures

16 Reliability Availability (does what we want) Integrity (doesn t do what we don t want) Consumer drones are bad at both

17 Ensuring Availability & Integrity Redundancy Availability Comparison Integrity

18 Simplex BITE Sensors Command Actuators Low Availability Low Integrity

19 Duplex BITE Sensors COM 1 BITE Channel select Actuators COM 2 Improved Availability

20 Triplex & COM/MON High Availability High Integrity

21 Causes of Consumer Drone Accidents Loss of situational awareness Loss of wireless connection Loss of control in gusting conditions Changes to airframe without sufficient avionics re-test Connectors Electrical failure (e.g. ESC overheat, battery rundown) Mechanical (e.g. bad rigging)

22 MTBA Reliability/Cost 100k 10k $10 $100 $1000 $10k $100k $1M $10M $100M Cost

23 Drone Reliability How much reliability do we need? Don t know! How much do we have? Don t know!

24 IMechE UAS Challenge 2015 Inter-university challenge organized by IMechE Autonomous flight between GPS waypoints to drop payload Rotary or Fixed-wing? Battery fires Quad crashing due to ESC overheat No washers on nuts

25 Reflections We need to increase drone reliability to an appropriate level We need to acquire some methods from conventional aviation to do this There is a middle ground in the hour accident rate region to be explored There are still a lot of easy wins to be had (e.g. shrinkwrapped HiL, dual-redundancy, control failure recovery)

26 Questions?