Human Factors in UAS

UAV Factory’s Portable Ground Control Station             As a leading developer of Unmanned Aerial Systems, as well as appropriate subsystems and accessories, UAV Factory produces a Portable Ground Control Station for use on a wide variety of unmanned airframes (UAV Factory, 2017). This system boasts a universal design, to be used with not only products developed and sold by UAV Factory, but also maintains a capability to be used off the shelf with practically any commercial/civilian unmanned aircraft. It is designed as a portable system, based around the Panasonic CF-31Toughbook with carry handles, wheels, and shoulder straps. The rugged design allows this system to be loaded up in the back of a truck or other vehicle, and taken on site anywhere that may be needed. As a visual interface, the ground control station utilizes two ultra-bright touch screen displays, one 17 inches and integrated into the system, and the other 13 inc...

UAS Integration into NextGen             The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)’s latest ongoing airspace management system, known as NextGen, is an initiative collaboration created in an attempt to update and fully modernize the National Airspace System (NAS). Relying on help from the entire aviation industry, NextGen promises to improve safety and efficiency throughout the airspace (Houston, 2017). Beginning in the early 2000’s with the Vision 100 act, the FAA’s plan to bring the NAS into the modern era aims to improve fuel economy, reduce airport and airspace congestion, provide standardize weather information to pilots and Air Traffic Controllers alike, and provide a better overall experience for passenger travelling on commercial airlines (Houston, 2017). NextGen intends on reaching these goals through Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) systems that act as a more reliable and accurate replacement to curren...

Drone America Savant in Beyond Line of Sight Operations             Mid-February of 2017, a record setting flight was completed above the Nevada desert. A small, fixed-winged unmanned aerial aircraft flew a distance of over 39 miles at an altitude of 1,500 AGL to deliver a small medical care package to a predetermined location. What made this flight so unique is that the delivery mission completed by this small Unmanned Aerial System (sUAS) operated under Beyond Line of Sight conditions for over an hour before delivering its payload upon landing at Hawthorne Industrial Airport. To accomplish this task, the team from the Nevada Institute for Autonomous Systems utilized a team of ground observers to maintain safety, as well a Cessna 206 containing aerial observers (Barker, 2017). In addition to additional safety observers, the Nevada Institute for Autonomous Systems team also required a Certificate of Authorization from the Federal...