State of the art of unmanned aircraft transport systems in industry related to risks, vulnerabilities and improvement of safety

Abstract

This paper discusses state of the art of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), drones (unmanned aerial vehicle -UAV's) and control infrastructure. The focus has been to explore risks, vulnerabilities and safe use of UAS in industrial operations. The use of UAS has been in rapid expansion in governmental areas (monitoring, military applications) and in the public domain (leisure, photography, transportation, monitoring). Several vulnerabilities have been identified. Few empirical analyses of operations, incidents and successful recoveries are available due to limited reporting. However, safety information from military drone operations are available. The three research questions in this paper are to describe planned use of UAS, major risks and benefits of UAS, and needed research, requirements and rules to improve safety and resilience of operations. We have explored the status of research in Norway, we have performed a literature review of autonomy in aviation, and we have explored relevant cases of industrial transport systems. Our findings indicate that rules and regulations are lagging development of technology and that there is poor focus on major risks related to human factors in engineering, design and operations. To ensure that safety and resilience is in focus from design, there is a need to define scope (i.e. control system as part of UAS) establish functional guidelines (such as human factors guidelines) and improve regulatory frameworks.