Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Can Unmanned Aircraft Mix With Commercial Planes?

Posted by samzenpus on from the fly-the-robotic-skies dept.

coondoggie writes "The Federal Aviation Administration this week signed a research and development agreement with GE Aviation to come up with a way to safely mix the burgeoning amounts of unmanned aircraft with commercial aviation. With this research the FAA and GE hope to accomplish an aviation first by completing the research to facilitate flight of an Unmanned Aircraft System with an FAA certified, trajectory-based flight management system. Integrating unmanned aircraft into the national airspace will be no easy task. The Government Accountability Office last year laid out the difficulties stating that routine unmanned aircraft access to national airspace poses technological, regulatory, workload, and coordination challenges."

3 of 203 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Where's the issue? by ColdWetDog · · Score: 4, Informative

    I don't see the problem in this. As long as you give the aircraft a simple AI (planes practically fly themselves anyway), and a pre-set route, they should be fairly predictable. A simple in-the-air navigation system for collision avoidance and you're set.

    But OTHER aircraft might not be so predictable. TFA mentions, for example, gliders. They don't file flight plans. They're too small to carry much in the way of radar or other collision avoidance devices. Both UAVs and gliders tend to fly at low altitudes. Traffic can get very complex, very fast.

    Besides, there is no such thing as a "simple" collision avoidance system. They're hard to do (mentioned, oddly enough, in TFA).

    --
    Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  2. Re:Not sure what the BFD is by hax4bux · · Score: 3, Informative

    You might start w/this little NTSB report about a UAV in the national airspace system.

    http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?ev_id=20060509X00531&key=1

  3. Re:No. by russ1337 · · Score: 3, Informative

    The FAA approach to aircraft software is loosely as follows (refer FAR 25.1309 as a starting point):

    - When building the aircraft, as part of a wider safety program a System Safety Assessment is carried out on the system in question - This may be in accordance with SAE ARP 4754

    - The SSA determines the required 'Design Assurance Level' of the system in question. - i.e a 'fly-by-wire' flight control is likely level A, and an inflight entertainment system might be level E.

    - The system is then built, and the software developed using a suitable software lifecycle process (such as IEEE 12207).

    - The Software is developed against an 'Assurance Standard' - most likely DO-178B. This requires various things to happen depending on the 'Level' of assurance required. If it is level A software (i.e for a flight control system), then there are lots of development and test requirements required (e.g full high-level requirement trace to low level requirements to hardware, with independence. - and full code coverage with testing of all inputs and outputs in every iteration). For something like an in flight entertainment (Level E), there are very little code / test requirements (to meet FAA regs - not passenger satisfaction!)

    The FAA credit the (quite robust when followed) DO-178B process as the reason for so few software related accidents. Many examples of aircraft accidents the media attribute to 'software fault' is usually a hardware error providing incorrect input. - or a result of poor requirement definition up front.... (such as software had no requirement to disregard erroneous Angle of Attack data, causing severe pitch problems in an airbus.)

    If you get into it, the FAA regulations around software are pretty safe. If you're in doubt, contact your local D.E.R.