The Smart Skies Project
Mr Reece Clothier
Prof. Rodney Walker
AUVSI North America
10th - 14th August 2009
Project Partners
www.smartskies.com.au
Project Aims
• Develop automated separation management
technologies that facilitate greater utilisation of
the airspace by both manned and unmanned
aircraft
– Separate 30 aircraft of varying performance types
in a 10NMi radius
– Increase traffic density
2
Project Objectives
• To develop enabling aviation technologies:
– A global automated separation management system
– A portable network enabled air traffic control radar system
– A network enabled onboard computer vision systems for
avoiding dynamic & static obstacles
• To integrate, demonstrate & validate the performance
of these technologies through real world flight testing
– Series of 8 phased flight testing activities
– Verify simulated results using real aircraft & real
communications
3
Phase Two Flight Trials
• Objective:
“To verify research and simulation results investigating the
performance of an automated separation management system”
• High level description
– Automated separation management system capable of
4D (x, y, z, t) separation assurance
– 30 separation management test scenarios involving
three real manned and unmanned test aircraft and four
simulated aircraft
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4
P2FT Concept
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5
ADAC
• Developed by Boeing Research & Technology, the
Automated Dynamic Airspace Controller:
– Provides the infrastructure to support the
automated separation management algorithms
under test
– Manages communications with the predictive flight
management systems (pFMS) located on all real
and simulated flight test aircraft
• For phase two trials it was located in Palmdale, CA
www.smartskies.com.au
6
ARCAA Airborne Systems
Laboratory
• Custom modified Cessna 172 R model
• Novotel Span truth data
system
• Conventional piloted or
optional enroute lateral
autopilot modes
• Onboard computing
• Custom pilot display
• Communications:
• Iridium, Next G (3.5G Mobile Network), UHF & VOIP
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7
ARCAA – Fixed wing UAS
ARCAA Flamingo UAS
•
•
•
•
Fully autonomous BVR operations
~20kg MTOW
4m wingspan
~ 1 hour endurance
ARCAA UAS 2
•
•
•
•
•
Fully autonomous BVR operations
~70kg MTOW
5.2m wingspan
6 hours endurance
Computer vision test bed
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ARCAA – Helicopter UAS
Vario Gasser UAS
•
•
•
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Fully autonomous BVR operations
~13kg MTOW
1.8m rotor
45 mins endurance
• Payloads:
• Scanning Laser
• Stereo vision
• Onboard computing
• Next G, Iridium, UHF Comms
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9
Sheffield Aircraft Simulator
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10
Test Range
• Burrandowan, 45km
NW of Kingaroy, QLD,
Australia
• Private 600m airstrip
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UAS v UAS
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12
ASL v Simulated Aircraft
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13
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14
Phase Two Results
• Over 13 hours of flight test
data characterising the
performance of the
automated airspace
management system
• Continued phased development & testing
– Increasing complexity in system capability & operations
– Goal is to efficiently separate up to 30 aircraft
www.smartskies.com.au
15
ARCAA Dynamic Sense & Act
• Vision-based algorithm
– Capable of 1024-by-768 @ 160fps in realtime
• Revised algorithm
– Detection rates improved from 80% to 99%.
– Improved FAR
Raw (very easy case)
Previous Detection & Tracking Algorithm
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Revised Detection & Tracking Algorithm
ARCAA Static Sense & Act
• Laser & stereo vision
system onboard UAS heli
• Autonomous infrastructure
inspection trial – Dec 2009
www.smartskies.com.au
17
Mobile Aircraft Tracking System
• Network enabled – radar and ADS-B system
• Radar characterisation testing – Dec 09
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What’s on the horizon
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Summary
• Research & development of complex systems:
–
–
–
–
Automated air traffic management system
Sense and act systems
Network enabled mobile radar and ADS-B system
Manned and autonomous flight test systems
• Integrated and tested under real world conditions
• Actively work with a forward thinking regulator to
meet the technical & operational needs of the
program
• Success through collaboration
www.smartskies.com.au
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Acknowledgments
• The Smart Skies Project is supported, in part, by
the Queensland Government Smart State Funding
Scheme
• Project Partners:
www.smartskies.com.au
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More information
www.smartskies.com.au
ra.walker@qut.edu.au
r.clothier@qut.edu.au
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Publications
•
Richard Baumeister, Regina Estkowski, Graham Spence and Reece Clothier, “Evaluation of
Separation Management Algorithms in Class G Airspace”, 2009 AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and
Control (GN&C) Conference, Hyatt Regency McCormick Place, Chicago, Illinois, 10 - 13 Aug 2009
•
Carnie, R., Walker, R., Corke, P., “Image processing algorithms for UAV sense and avoid”,
Proceedings 2006 IEEE Conference on Robotics and Automation
•
S. Hrabar and G. Sukhatme, "Vision-Based Navigation Through Urban Canyons", to appear in
Journal of Field Robotics, 2009
•
S. Hrabar, P. Corke and M. Bosse, "High Dynamic Range Stereo Vision for Outdoor Mobile
Robotics" In ICRA, 2009
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