1. Project Partners www.smartskies.com.au AUVSI North America 10 th - 14 th August 2009 Mr Reece Clothier Prof. Rodney Walker The Smart Skies Project

2. 2 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

3. 3 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

4. 4 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 www.smartskies.com.au

5. 5 P2FT Concept www.smartskies.com.au

6. 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

7. ARCAA Airborne Systems Laboratory Custom modified Cessna 172 R model www.smartskies.com.au 7 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

8. ARCAA – Fixed wing UAS 8 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

9. ARCAA – Helicopter UAS 9 Vario Gasser UAS Fully autonomous BVR operations ~13kg MTOW 1.8m rotor 45 mins endurance Payloads: Scanning Laser Stereo vision Onboard computing Next G, Iridium, UHF Comms www.smartskies.com.au

10. Sheffield Aircraft Simulator www.smartskies.com.au 10

11. Test Range Burrandowan, 45km NW of Kingaroy, QLD, Australia Private 600m airstrip www.smartskies.com.au

12. 12 UAS v UAS

13. ASL v Simulated Aircraft www.smartskies.com.au 13

14. www.smartskies.com.au 14

15. Phase Two Results Over 13 hours of flight test data characterising the performance of the automated airspace management system www.smartskies.com.au 15 Continued phased development & testing –Increasing complexity in system capability & operations –Goal is to efficiently separate up to 30 aircraft

16. 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 AlgorithmRevised Detection & Tracking Algorithm www.smartskies.com.au

17. ARCAA Static Sense & Act Laser & stereo vision system onboard UAS heli Autonomous infrastructure inspection trial – Dec 2009 www.smartskies.com.au 17

18. Mobile Aircraft Tracking System Network enabled – radar and ADS-B system Radar characterisation testing – Dec 09 www.smartskies.com.au 18

19. What’s on the horizon 19

20. 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 20

21. Acknowledgments The Smart Skies Project is supported, in part, by the Queensland Government Smart State Funding Scheme Project Partners: www.smartskies.com.au 21

22. 22 More information www.smartskies.com.au ra.walker@qut.edu.au r.clothier@qut.edu.au

23. 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 www.smartskies.com.au 23