Analysis of autonomous deconfliction in Unmanned Aircraft Systems for Testing and Evaluation

Abstract

Autonomous deconfliction capability is crucial to the successful deployment of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) in most of their envisioned application scenarios. Civil and military applications of UAS demand ever-decreasing levels of human involvement and oversight, hence, UAS need to grow in autonomy. Autonomous deconfliction is a capability that is not only essential for the UAS's self-preservation, but also for avoiding damage to static infrastructure and/or to friendly and civilian aircraft flying contiguously. It is also key to the successful completion of the missions assigned to the UAS. Numerous solutions to partial aspects of autonomous deconfliction have been proposed. However, there is an enormous gap in systematic approaches that may be used for Testing and Evaluation (T&E) of autonomous capabilities such as deconfliction. This paper focuses on application of Systems Engineering-oriented tools to the analysis of autonomous deconfliction capability in UAS. The Systems Capability Technical Reference Model (SC-TRM) presented in this work helps in identifying the different aspects of a deconfliction solution. Besides presenting the Systems Engineering-oriented tools and the analysis of the deconfliction problem based on those tools, this paper also proposes venues that may enable concrete implementation and development of T&E methods that are applicable to civil as well as military applications.