This thesis focuses on vision-based detection and observation of small, slow-moving targets using a gimballed fixed-wing unmanned aircraft system (UAS). Generally, visual tracking algorithms are tuned to detect motion of relatively large objects in the scene with noticeably significant motion; therefore, applications such as high-altitude visual searches for human motion often ignore target motion as noise. Furthermore, after a target is identified, arbitrary maneuvers for transitioning to overhead orbits for better observation may result in temporary or permanent loss of target visibility. We present guidelines for tuning parameters of the Visual Multiple Target Tracking (Visual MTT) algorithm to enhance its detection capabilities for very small, slow-moving targets in high-resolution images. We show that the tuning approach is able to detect walking motion of a human described by 10-15 pixels from high altitudes. An algorithm is then presented for defining rotational bounds on the controllable degrees of freedom of an aircraft and gimballed camera system for maintaining visibility of a known ground target. Critical rotations associated with the fastest loss or acquisition of target visibility are also defined. The accuracy of these bounds are demonstrated in simulation and simple applications of the algorithm are described for UAS. We also present a path planning and control framework for defining and following both dynamically and visually feasibly transition trajectories from an arbitrary point to an orbit over a known target for further observation. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this framework in maintaining constant target visibility while transitioning to the intended orbit as well as in transitioning to a lower altitude orbit for more detailed visual analysis of the intended target.

<p>Safety Management Systems (SMS) in the aviation industry is increasingly an essential aspect of identifying hazards and managing the associated risks. While SMS has become commonplace and is often a regulatory requirement for air carriers, it remains voluntary for many other aviation service providers such as airports. Over the past decade, commercial UAS operations have significantly increased, leading to safety and economic challenges for airports. This research studied the current state of SMS and commercial UAS operations at airports. This research utilized a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods, which included an extensive literature review, interviews, and a survey of airport stakeholders. The literature review confirmed an increase in UAS hazards and risks within the airport operating area coupled with immature SMS practices that address these UAS operations. To build on the findings from the review of literature, a survey instrument was developed, distributed to airport stakeholders, and the responses were statistically analyzed. To gain greater insight into these findings, researchers interviewed three airport subject matter experts. The study compared the airports current state of SMS with UAS operations, the airport stakeholder’s level of familiarity with related policies, and their need for additional UAS SMS guidance material or training. Research results suggest a need for further development and adoption of robust SMS practices at airports along with education and training. This study may assist airport stakeholders, UAS operators, and regulators to further develop robust safety and risk management practices that support safe UAS operations within the airport operating area.</p>

Unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) are an important future technology with early generations already being used in many areas of application encompassing both military and civilian domains. This thesis proposes a number of integration techniques for combining control-based navigation with more abstract path planning functionality for UASs. These techniques are empirically tested and validated using an RMAX helicopter platform used in the UASTechLab at Linköping University. Although the thesis focuses on helicopter platforms, the techniques are generic in nature and can be used in other robotic systems. At the control level a navigation task is executed by a set of control modes. A framework based on the abstraction of hierarchical concurrent state machines for the design and development of hybrid control systems is presented. The framework is used to specify  reactive behaviors and for sequentialisation of control modes. Selected examples of control systems deployed on UASs are presented. Collision-free paths executed at the control level are generated by path planning algorithms.We propose a path replanning framework extending the existing path planners to allow dynamic repair of flight paths when new obstacles or no-fly zones obstructing the current flight path are detected. Additionally, a novel approach to selecting the best path repair strategy based on machine learning technique is presented. A prerequisite for a safe navigation in a real-world environment is an accurate geometrical model. As a step towards building accurate 3D models onboard UASs initial work on the integration of a laser range finder with a helicopter platform is also presented. Combination of the techniques presented provides another step towards building comprehensive and robust navigation systems for future UASs.

Lors de la conception des avions, il est courant que les constructeurs évaluent la sûreté de fonctionnement en utilisant des modèles stochastiques, mais l'évaluation de la fiabilité opérationnelle à l’aide de modèles en ligne, pendant la réalisation des missions, reste rarement effectuée. Souvent, l'évaluation stochastique concerne la sécurité des avions. Cette thèse porte sur la modélisation de la fiabilité opérationnelle des avions, pour aider à la planification des activités de maintenance et des missions, ainsi qu’à la bonne réalisation de ces dernières. Nous avons développé une approche de modélisation, basée sur un méta-modèle qui sert de base i) de structuration des informations nécessaires à l’évaluation de la fiabilité opérationnelle d’un avion et ii) pour la construction de modèles stochastiques pouvant être mis à jour dynamiquement. La mise à jour concerne l'état courant des systèmes avion, un profil de mission et les moyens de maintenance disponibles dans les diverses escales incluses dans le profil de la mission. L'objectif est de permettre l'évaluation de la fiabilité opérationnelle en ligne. Deux cas d’études, basés sur des sous-systèmes avion, sont considérés à titre d'illustration. Nous présentons des exemples de résultats qui montrent le rôle important de l’évaluation de la fiabilité opérationnelle pendant une mission d’avion / Dependability assessment, by system manufacturer, during aircraft design, based on stochastic modeling, is of common practice, but model based operational dependability assessment online, during missions' achievement, is seldom done. Usually, the stochastic assessment addresses aircraft safety.This thesis addresses aircraft operational dependability modeling to support mission and maintenance planning, as well as the achievement of the missions. We develop a modeling approach, based on a meta-model that is used as a basis i) to structure the information needed to assess aircraft operational reliability and ii) to build a stochastic model that can be updated dynamically. The update concerns the current state of the aircraft system, a mission profile and the maintenance facilities available at the flight stop locations involved in the mission. The aim is to enable operational reliability assessment online. Two case studies, based on aircraft subsystems, are considered for illustration. We present examples of evaluation results that show the valuable role of operational dependability assessment during aircraft mission

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Uninhabited Aircraft Systems (UAS), as a relatively novel technology, was always seen as a tool available and utilized only by rich and developed states. But thanks to globalizations and the fast proliferation of commercially available drones, this platform has already been used by smaller states and also non-state groups, giving them possibilities never seen before. Yet, there is little research on how and why these new actors use UAS to claim their cause. The research question to guide this thesis is how and why do non-state armed groups differ from states when using Uninhabited Aircraft Systems in their military operations? The thesis uses a demand- and supply-side theory, adapted for the proliferation of drones to help answer that question. This theory is tested in a multiple case study involving the United States as a state and the Houthis as a non-state group during the Yemeni crisis, from 2011 to 2022. Through a structured, focused comparison between the cases, indicators from the demand- and supply-side models were used to understand the differences in drone use between different actors. The main findings are that states and non-state armed groups differ in their use of UAS mainly because they have different boundaries (legal and technological), but also for the symbol and status that this platform carries. Finally, it was seen that the theory is not only able to clarify the trends on proliferation, but also the why actors use UAS, with few remarks, but with a need to test it further.

<p> Design and optimization of aircraft thermal management systems (TMS) is typically conducted by considering a single system architecture at steady-state conditions, using per?formance metrics such as bleed air flow rate, fuel burn flow rate, or total system mass. However, when trying to increase the overall performance of a legacy system or analyzing new system architectures, it can be difficult to identify how individual component or sub?system changes will propagate throughout the overall TMS. In this thesis, new knowledge and tools are presented that will advance the use of exergy-based design techniques for next generation aircraft thermal management systems (TMS). This is motivated by the fact that exergy destruction is a quantity that can be calculated for any subsystem or component, regardless of energy domain or function. The relationship between exergy destruction min?imization (EDM) and conventional design metrics is investigated and quantified. This is performed through the use of a steady-state analysis and by leveraging a high fidelity model of a complex TMS. It is shown that exergy destruction is not only sensitive to individual component parameters in a manner consistent with conventional performance metrics, but that due to its generalizability, it also captures how changes in one subsystem propagate throughout the overall TMS. Specifically, through a design case study, it is shown that minimizing system-wide exergy destruction rate (without an engine model) yields a similar engine fuel burn rate as when fuel burn is minimized directly, but also results in a signif?icantly lower system mass. Building on these results, a transient design and analysis tool for TMS is developed using a graph theoretic approach. The tool is used on a case study of an air cycle machine (ACM) and on an architecture enumeration case study for a notional TMS. The transient exergy-based analysis is shown to provide insight into how efficiently energy is used at a component level, and captures the differences in thermal performance between architectures. </p>

This dissertation advances tools for the certification of unmanned aircraft system (UAS) flight controllers. We develop two thrusts to this goal: (1) the validation and improvement of an uncertain UAS framework based on integral quadratic constraint (IQC) theory and (2) the development of novel IQC theorems which allow the analysis of uncertain systems having time-varying characteristics. Pertaining to the first thrust, this work improves and implements an IQC-based robustness analysis framework for UAS. The approach models the UAS using a linear fractional transformation on uncertainties and conducts robustness analysis on the uncertain system via IQC theory. By expressing the set of desired UAS flight paths with an uncertainty, the framework enables analysis of the uncertain UAS flying about any level path whose radius of curvature is bounded. To demonstrate the versatility of this technique, we use IQC analysis to tune trajectory-tracking and path-following controllers designed via H2 or H-infinity synthesis methods. IQC analysis is also used to tune path-following PID controllers. By employing a non-deterministic simulation environment and conducting numerous flight tests, we demonstrate the capability of the framework in predicting loss of control, comparing the robustness of different controllers, and tuning controllers. Finally, this work demonstrates that signal IQCs have an important role in obtaining IQC analysis results which are less conservative and more consistent with observations from flight test data. With regards to the second thrust, we prove a novel theorem which enables robustness analysis of uncertain systems where the nominal plant and the IQC multiplier are linear time-varying systems and the nominal plant may have a non-zero initial condition. When the nominal plant and the IQC multiplier are eventually periodic, robustness analysis can be accomplished by solving a finite-dimensional semidefinite program. Time-varying IQC multipliers are beneficial in analysis because they provide the possibility of reducing conservatism and are capable of expressing uncertainties that have unique time-domain characteristics. A number of time-varying IQC multipliers are introduced to better describe such uncertainties. The utility of this theorem is demonstrated with various examples, including one which produces bounds on the UAS position after an aggressive Split-S maneuver. / Doctor of Philosophy / This work develops tools to aid in the certification of unmanned aircraft system (UAS) flight controllers. The forthcoming results are founded on robust control theory, which allows the incorporation of a variety of uncertainties in the UAS mathematical model and provides tools to determine how robust the system is to these uncertainties. Such a foundation provides a complementary perspective to that obtained with simulations. Whereas simulation environments provide a probabilistic-type analysis and are oftentimes costly, the following results provide worst-case guarantees—for the allowable disturbances and uncertainties—and require far less computational resources. Here we take two approaches in our development of certification tools for UAS. First we validate and improve on an uncertain UAS framework that relies on integral quadratic constraint (IQC) theory to analyze the robustness of the UAS in the presence of uncertainties and disturbances. Our second approach develops novel IQC theorems that can aid in providing bounds on the UAS state during its flight trajectory. Though the applications in this dissertation are focused on UAS, the theory can be applied to a wide variety of physical and nonphysical problems wherein uncertainties in the mathematical model cannot be avoided.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / The no-tillage system (SPD) was one of the main innovations in Brazilian agriculture, but there are still discussions about how to achieve and maintain its quality and sustainability. The management of SPD areas through management zones presents great potential for this purpose, since it integrates different variables in order to facilitate and increase the technical and computerized management of agricultural practices and consequently the reduction of polluting potencies in environments. Among the main variables used to delimit management zones are the chemical attributes, yield maps and recently the NDVI index. In this sense, with Article I, the objective was to delimit management zones through yield maps and NDVIs derived from satellite images in historical series. To do this, in an area of 118 ha, three yield maps of different cultures between the years of 2010 to 2015 were selected and for each yield map we searched for the images from the Landsat 5 and 8 satellite that included a date in of the cycle of the crop in question from which the NDVI was calculated and also with the intention of verifying the stability of the NDVI generated in different crop cycles, four other satellite images were selected for four crops according to the historical of the study area, between the years 2007 and 2013. In article II, the objective was to verify the variability caused by the winter cover crop in the summer crop and if the NDVI index performed by land and with a RPAS is able to evidence this variability in the summer crop. In an area 73.96 there was applied a sampling grid of 70.71 x 70.71 m (0.5 ha), where soil sampling for chemical analysis and dry matter nutrients accumulated in the winter cover crop of black oats where soybean was sown in the summer, in which in the R5 and R5.5 stages evaluations were carried out with a portable sensor "by land" and with a RPAS for obtaining of the NDVI index and finally the grain yield of the soybean was determined, as well as the final population of plants. With the results, NDVI from satellite images can replace and/or compose the yield maps (article I) and that the dry mass and accumulated nutrients in the winter crop interfere with the yield of the summer crop and the NDVI index performed by land or with a RPAS was effective in expressing this variability (article II). / O Sistema Plantio Direto (SPD) foi uma das principais inovações na agricultura brasileira, contudo ainda há discussões sobre como alcançar e manter sua qualidade e sustentabilidade. A gestão de áreas sob SPD por meio de zonas de manejo, apresenta grande potencial para essa finalidade, pois integra diferentes variáveis afim de facilitar e incrementar a gestão tecnificada e informatizada das práticas agrícolas, e em consequência a redução de potencias poluidores no ambiente. Entre as principais variáveis utilizadas para delimitar zonas de manejo estão os atributos químicos, mapas de rendimento e recentemente o índice NDVI. Nesse sentido, com o artigo I objetivou-se delimitar zonas de manejo por meio de mapas de rendimento e NDVI oriundos de imagens de satélite em series históricas. Para isso, em uma área de 118 ha, selecionou-se três mapas de rendimento de diferentes culturas compreendidas entre os anos de 2010 a 2015 e para cada mapa de rendimento buscou-se selecionar as imagens satélite oriundas série Landsat que compreendessem uma data dentro do ciclo da cultura em questão a partir das quais procedeu-se o cálculo do NDVI e ainda com o intuito de verificar a estabilidade do NDVI gerado em diferentes ciclos de cultivo, foram selecionadas outras quatro imagens de satélites referentes a quatro cultivos, segundo o histórico de cultivo da área de estudo, compreendidos entre os anos de 2007 a 2013. Já no artigo II, o objetivo foi verificar a variabilidade causada pela cultura de cobertura de inverno na cultura de verão e se o índice de NDVI realizado “por terra” e com um RPAS é capaz de evidenciar essa variabilidade na cultura de verão. Em uma área 73,96 ha, aplicou-se uma malha amostral de 70,71 x 70,71 m (0,5 ha), onde realizou-se a amostragem de solo para a análise química e as avaliações de matéria seca e os nutrientes acumulados na cultura de cobertura inverno da aveia preta onde sobre esta, foi semeada no verão a cultura da soja, na qual nos estágios R5 e R5.5 foram realizadas avaliações com um sensor portátil “por terra” e com um RPAS para a obtenção do índice de NDVI e por final determinou-se o rendimento de grãos da soja, bem como, a população final de plantas. Com os resultados, constatou-se que O NDVI foi um bom parâmetro para delimitar duas zonas de manejo de alto e baixo potencial (artigo I) e que a matéria seca e os nutrientes acumulados na cultura de inverno interferem o rendimento da cultura de verão, sendo que o índice de NDVI realizado “por terra” ou com um RPAS foi eficaz em expressar essa variabilidade (artigo II).

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