Systems approach to compliance with Australian airworthiness regulations for uninhabited aircraft systems

A considerable amount of research effort has, and continues to be invested into technologies and algorithms for capabilities which are forecast to be needed in future uninhabited vehicles. Much of this research is conducted with the aim of increasing the level of autonomy of these vehicles. However these technologies and capabilities provide only a part of the total system solution and must be integrated into an architecture that covers the entire vehicle system. This total system approach is particularly relevant since this is how airworthiness regulators consider Uninhabited Aircraft Systems. <br><br>Airworthiness of uninhabited aircraft has been addressed by Australian aviation regulators. While the regulations may be in place, technical challenges still remain for the suppliers of these systems. For example, one of these unresolved technical challenges is the capability of uninhabited aircraft to “see and avoid” other aircraft. The operation of manned and uninhabited aircraft in the same airspace remains an issue and certification of uninhabited aircraft for unrestricted operations remains a challenge. <br><br>The work described here has used the systems engineering approach to develop a high level architecture for a generic Uninhabited Aircraft System. The architecture was derived from airworthiness regulations. Since the primary difference between piloted and uninhabited aircraft is the presence of an on-board human pilot, this is the main area which this architecture describes. <br><br>Australian airworthiness regulations were taken as the starting point to provide requirements. This ensured that the statutory requirements were considered in the viii development of the architecture. The requirements and functional analysis techniques from systems engineering were applied to the airworthiness regulations. This produced a set of derived requirements and a functional description of the UAS. The requirements analysis results in a “black box” or external description of the necessary properties and qualities of the system. Functional analysis produces a “white box” or internal description of the workings of the system which allows decomposition into smaller elements. <br><br>The requirements and functional description which have been developed are generic and are applicable to many Uninhabited Aircraft Systems. The resultant architecture may be used in conjunction with operational requirements to develop a specific Uninhabited Aircraft System. Since the architecture is generic, it may also be used to provide the structure of a simulation model of an Uninhabited Aircraft System.<br>