A Flight Management System (FMS) performs 4 Dimensional flight planning / Lateral Planning (Calculation of the latitude and longitudes of waypoints), Vertical Planning (Calculation of the altitudes of waypoints) and Temporal Planning(Calculation of Estimated Time of Arrival). Correct and accurate calculation of4D flight path and then guiding the pilot/airplane to track the route in specified accuracy limits in terms of lateral (i.e Required Navigational Performance RNP), vertical (Reduced Vertical Seperation Minima RVSM), and time (Required Time of Arrival RTA) is what FMS performs in brief. Any deviation of planned input values versus actual input values, especially during the emergency cases (i.e burning outoneof engines etc.), causes the aircraft to deviate the plan and requires replanning now taking into consideration the currentsituation. In emergency situations especially in Oceaning Flights (flights whose cruise phase lasts more than 5 hour is called as &ldquo / Oceaning Flights&rdquo / ) Optimum Cruise Phase Flight Route Planning plays a vital role. In avionics domain &ldquo / Optimum&rdquo / does not mean &ldquo / shortest path&rdquo / mainly due to the effect of weather data as wind speed and direction directly affects the groundspeed. In the scope of the current thesis, an algorithm employing dynamic programming paradigms will be designed and implemented to find the optimum flight route planning. A top down approach by making use of aircraft route planning ontology will be implemented to fill the gap between the flight plan specific domain knowledge and optimization techniques employed. Where as the algorithm will be generic by encapsulating the aircraft&rsquo / s performance characteristics / it will be evaluated on C-130 aircraft.

A segurança nos voos de Veículos Aéreos Não Tripulados (VANTs) é uma importante questão e vem ganhando destaque devido a uma série de acidentes com tais aeronaves. O aumento do número de aeronaves no espaço aéreo e a autonomia cada vez maior para realizar missões estão entre outros elementos que merecem destaques. No entanto, pouca atenção tem sido dada a autonomia da aeronave em casos emergenciais [Contexto]. Nesse contexto, o desenvolvimento de algoritmos que efetuem o planejamento de rotas na ocorrência de situações críticas é fundamental para obter maior segurança aérea. Eventuais situações de insegurança podem estar relacionadas a uma falha nos equipamentos do veículo aéreo que impede a continuação da missão em curso pela aeronave [Lacuna]. A presente pesquisa avança o estado da arte considerando um conceito chamado In-Flight Awareness (IFA), que estabelece consciência situacional em VANTs, visando maior segurança de voo. Os estudos também avançam na proposição de modelos matemáticos que representem o estado da aeronave avariada, viabilizando o pouso emergencial e minimizando possíveis danos [Propósito]. Este trabalho utiliza técnicas de computação evolutiva como Algoritmos Genéticos (AG) e Algoritmos Genéticos Multi-Populacional (AGMP), além de uma Heurística Gulosa (HG) e um modelo de Programação Linear Inteira Mista (PLIM) no tratamento de falhas críticas juntamente com o conceito de IFA [Metodologia]. As soluções obtidas foram avaliadas através de experimentos offline usando os modelos matemáticos desenvolvidos, além de validadas em um simulador de voo e em um voo real. De forma geral, o AG e AGMP obtiveram resultados equivalentes, salvando o VANT em aproximadamente 89% dos mapas. A HG conseguiu trazer a aeronave até uma região bonificadora em 77% dos mapas dentro de um tempo computacional abaixo de 1 segundo. No modelo PLIM, o tempo gasto foi de cerca de quatro minutos já que garantia a otimalidade da solução encontrada. Devido ao seu elevado tempo computacional, uma estratégia evolvendo rotas pré-calculadas foi definida a partir do PLIM, mostrando-se bastante promissora. Nos experimentos envolvendo simulador de voo foram testadas diferentes condições de vento e se verificou que mesmo sobre tais condições os métodos desenvolvidos conseguiram efetuar o pouso com segurança [Resultado]. O trabalho apresentado colabora com a segurança de Veículos Aéreos Não Tripulados e com a proposta de modelos matemáticos que representem a aeronave em caso de situações críticas. Os métodos, de forma geral, mostraram-se promissores na resolução do problema de pouso emergencial já que trouxeram a aeronave com segurança até regiões interessantes ao pouso em um baixo tempo computacional. Isso foi atestado pelos resultados obtidos a partir das simulações offline, em simulador de voo e em voo real [Conclusão]. As principais contribuições do trabalho são: modelagem de regiões adequadas ao pouso, modelagem de falhas, arquitetura do sistema planejador de rotas e modelo linear para para pouso emergencial [Contribuição]. / The security involved in flights of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is an important issue and is achieving prominence due to a number of accidents involving such aircraft. Other elements that deserve highlights are the increase in the number of aircraft in the airspace and autonomy to perform missions, however, little attention has been given to the autonomy of the aircraft in emergency cases [Context]. In this context, the development of algorithms that contribute significantly to the path planning in the event of critical situations is essential for more air traffic. Possible situations of insecurity may be related to a failure in the equipment of vehicle that prevents the continuation of the current mission by aircraft [Gap]. The research advances the state of the art considering a concept called In-Flight Awareness (IFA), which provides situational awareness in UAVs aiming at greater flight safety. Advances also in the developing of mathematical models that represent the state of the damaged aircraft, with the purpose to execute the emergency landing by minimizing damages [Purpose]. Thus, this work applies evolutionary computation techniques such as Genetic Algorithms (GA) and Multi-Population Genetic Algorithms (MPGA), as well as a Greedy Heuristic (GH) and a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model to deal with critical situations along with the concept of IFA [Methodology]. The solutions obtained were evaluated through offline experiments using the developed mathematical models, which were validated in a flight simulator and a real-world flight. In General, the GA and MPGA reached similar results by saving the UAV in approximately 89% of the maps, while the GH was able to bring the aircraft to a bonus region for 77% of maps within a feasible computational time lower than 1 second. In the MILP model, the time spent was about four minutes since it guarantees optimality of the solution found. Due to such high computational time, a strategy involving nearby routes pre-calculated was defined from the MILP which was very promising. In experiments involving flight simulator, different wind conditions were tested and it was found that even under such conditions the methods developed have managed to execute the landing safely [Result]. The work presented collaborates with the safety of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and with the proposal of mathematical models that represent the aircraft under critical situations. The methods, in general, were promising since they brought the aircraft to execute a safe landing within a low computational time as shown by offline simulations, flight simulator and real flight [Conclusion]. The main contributions are: fault modeling, system architecture planner routes and linear model for emergency landing. [Contribution].

Emergency landing is a critical safety mechanism for aerial vehicles. Commercial aircraft have triply-redundant systems that greatly increase the probability that the pilot will be able to land the aircraft at a designated airfield in the event of an emergency. In general aviation, the chances of always reaching a designated airfield are lower, but the successful pilot might use landmarks and other visual information to safely land in unprepared locations. For small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS), triply- or even doubly-redundant systems are unlikely due to size, weight, and power constraints. Additionally, there is a growing demand for beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operations, where an sUAS operator would be unable to guide the vehicle safely to the ground. This thesis presents a machine vision-based approach to emergency landing for small unmanned aircraft systems. In the event of an emergency, the vehicle uses a pre-compiled database of potential landing sites to select the most accessible location to land based on vehicle health. Because it is impossible to know the current state of any ground environment, a camera is used for real-time visual feedback. Using the recently developed Recursive-RANSAC algorithm, an arbitrary number of moving ground obstacles can be visually detected and tracked. If obstacles are present in the selected ditch site, the emergency landing system chooses a new ditch site to mitigate risk. This system is called Safe2Ditch.

A forced landing for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is required if there is an emergency on board that requires the aircraft to land immediately. Piloted aircraft in the same scenario have a human on board that is able to engage in the complex decision making process involved in the choice of a suitable landing location. If UAVs are to ever fly routinely in civilian airspace, then it is argued that the problem of finding a safe landing location for a forced landing is an important unresolved problem that must be addressed. This thesis presents the results of an investigation into the feasibility of using machine vision techniques to locate candidate landing sites for an autonomous UAV forced landing. The approach taken involves the segmentation of the image into areas that are large enough and free of obstacles; classification of the surface types of these areas; incorporating slope information from readily available digital terrain databases; and finally fusing these maps together using a high level set of simple linguistic fuzzy rules to create a final candidate landing site map. All techniques were evaluated on actual flight data collected from a Cessna 172 flying in South East Queensland. It was shown that the use of existing segmentation approaches from the literature did not provide the outputs required for this problem in the airborne images encountered in the gathered dataset. A simple method was then developed and tested that provided suitably sized landing areas that were free of obstacles and large enough to land. The advantage of this novel approach was that these areas could be extracted from the image directly without solving the difficult task of segmenting the entire image into the individual homogenous objects. A number of neural network classification approaches were tested with the surface types of candidate landing site regions extracted from the aerial images. A number of novel techniques were developed through experimentation with the classifiers that greatly improved upon the classification accuracy of the standard approaches considered. These novel techniques included: automatic generation of suitable output subclasses based on generic output classes of the classifier; an optimisation process for generating the best set of input features for the classifier based on an automated analysis of the feature space; the use of a multi-stage classification approach; and the generation of confidence measures based on the outputs of the neural network classifiers. The final classification result of the system performs significantly better than a human test pilot's classification interpretation of the dataset samples. In summary, the algorithms were able to locate candidate landing site areas that were free of obstacles 92.3 ±2.6% (99% confidence in the result) of the time, with free obstacle candidate landing site areas that were large enough to land in missed only 5.3 ±2.2% (99% confidence in the result) of the time. The neural network classification networks developed were able to classify the surface type of the candidate landing site areas to an accuracy of 93.9 ±3.7% (99% confidence in the result) for areas labelled as Very Certain. The overall surface type classification accuracy for the system (includes all candidate landing sites) was 91.95 ±4.2% (99% confidence in the result). These results were considered to be an excellent result as a human test pilot subject was only able to classify the same data set to an accuracy of 77.24 %. The thesis concludes that the techniques developed showed considerable promise and could be used immediately to enhance the safety of UAV operations. Recommendations include the testing of algorithms over a wider range of datasets and improvements to the surface type classification approach that incorporates contextual information in the image to further improve the classification accuracy.

A segurança nos voos de Veículos Aéreos Não Tripulados (VANTs) é uma importante questão e vem ganhando destaque devido a uma série de acidentes com tais aeronaves. O aumento do número de aeronaves no espaço aéreo e a autonomia cada vez maior para realizar missões estão entre outros elementos que merecem destaques. No entanto, pouca atenção tem sido dada a autonomia da aeronave em casos emergenciais [Contexto]. Nesse contexto, o desenvolvimento de algoritmos que efetuem o planejamento de rotas na ocorrência de situações críticas é fundamental para obter maior segurança aérea. Eventuais situações de insegurança podem estar relacionadas a uma falha nos equipamentos do veículo aéreo que impede a continuação da missão em curso pela aeronave [Lacuna]. A presente pesquisa avança o estado da arte considerando um conceito chamado In-Flight Awareness (IFA), que estabelece consciência situacional em VANTs, visando maior segurança de voo. Os estudos também avançam na proposição de modelos matemáticos que representem o estado da aeronave avariada, viabilizando o pouso emergencial e minimizando possíveis danos [Propósito]. Este trabalho utiliza técnicas de computação evolutiva como Algoritmos Genéticos (AG) e Algoritmos Genéticos Multi-Populacional (AGMP), além de uma Heurística Gulosa (HG) e um modelo de Programação Linear Inteira Mista (PLIM) no tratamento de falhas críticas juntamente com o conceito de IFA [Metodologia]. As soluções obtidas foram avaliadas através de experimentos offline usando os modelos matemáticos desenvolvidos, além de validadas em um simulador de voo e em um voo real. De forma geral, o AG e AGMP obtiveram resultados equivalentes, salvando o VANT em aproximadamente 89% dos mapas. A HG conseguiu trazer a aeronave até uma região bonificadora em 77% dos mapas dentro de um tempo computacional abaixo de 1 segundo. No modelo PLIM, o tempo gasto foi de cerca de quatro minutos já que garantia a otimalidade da solução encontrada. Devido ao seu elevado tempo computacional, uma estratégia evolvendo rotas pré-calculadas foi definida a partir do PLIM, mostrando-se bastante promissora. Nos experimentos envolvendo simulador de voo foram testadas diferentes condições de vento e se verificou que mesmo sobre tais condições os métodos desenvolvidos conseguiram efetuar o pouso com segurança [Resultado]. O trabalho apresentado colabora com a segurança de Veículos Aéreos Não Tripulados e com a proposta de modelos matemáticos que representem a aeronave em caso de situações críticas. Os métodos, de forma geral, mostraram-se promissores na resolução do problema de pouso emergencial já que trouxeram a aeronave com segurança até regiões interessantes ao pouso em um baixo tempo computacional. Isso foi atestado pelos resultados obtidos a partir das simulações offline, em simulador de voo e em voo real [Conclusão]. As principais contribuições do trabalho são: modelagem de regiões adequadas ao pouso, modelagem de falhas, arquitetura do sistema planejador de rotas e modelo linear para para pouso emergencial [Contribuição]. / The security involved in flights of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is an important issue and is achieving prominence due to a number of accidents involving such aircraft. Other elements that deserve highlights are the increase in the number of aircraft in the airspace and autonomy to perform missions, however, little attention has been given to the autonomy of the aircraft in emergency cases [Context]. In this context, the development of algorithms that contribute significantly to the path planning in the event of critical situations is essential for more air traffic. Possible situations of insecurity may be related to a failure in the equipment of vehicle that prevents the continuation of the current mission by aircraft [Gap]. The research advances the state of the art considering a concept called In-Flight Awareness (IFA), which provides situational awareness in UAVs aiming at greater flight safety. Advances also in the developing of mathematical models that represent the state of the damaged aircraft, with the purpose to execute the emergency landing by minimizing damages [Purpose]. Thus, this work applies evolutionary computation techniques such as Genetic Algorithms (GA) and Multi-Population Genetic Algorithms (MPGA), as well as a Greedy Heuristic (GH) and a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model to deal with critical situations along with the concept of IFA [Methodology]. The solutions obtained were evaluated through offline experiments using the developed mathematical models, which were validated in a flight simulator and a real-world flight. In General, the GA and MPGA reached similar results by saving the UAV in approximately 89% of the maps, while the GH was able to bring the aircraft to a bonus region for 77% of maps within a feasible computational time lower than 1 second. In the MILP model, the time spent was about four minutes since it guarantees optimality of the solution found. Due to such high computational time, a strategy involving nearby routes pre-calculated was defined from the MILP which was very promising. In experiments involving flight simulator, different wind conditions were tested and it was found that even under such conditions the methods developed have managed to execute the landing safely [Result]. The work presented collaborates with the safety of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and with the proposal of mathematical models that represent the aircraft under critical situations. The methods, in general, were promising since they brought the aircraft to execute a safe landing within a low computational time as shown by offline simulations, flight simulator and real flight [Conclusion]. The main contributions are: fault modeling, system architecture planner routes and linear model for emergency landing. [Contribution].

<p>As Urban Air Mobility (UAM) is developed and brought into fruition via electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicles, contingencies associated with this new distributed electric propulsion technology in metropolitan areas must be considered. On the state of knowledge on contingencies for eVTOL vehicles, these can be Epistemological Risks or Ontological Risks. Epistemological Risks include known-knowns (probabilistic risks) and known-unknowns (gaps in knowledge). Ontological Risks include, unknown-knowns (hidden knowledge), unknown-unknowns (fog of ignorance). As UAM operations at large scale do not have as much historical accidents data as General Aviation or Commercial Aviation, it is challenging to estimate its accident failure rate per 100,000 flight hours. While battery thermal runaway, battery energy uncertainty, software issues, and common mode power failures are some failure cases listed in this thesis, it is the undiscovered contingency (i.e., unknown-unknown) or unprepared contingency (i.e., unknown-known), along with other external factors, that can lead to an accident. UAM is expected to operate at 1500 feet AGL and at high frequencies over dense metropolitan areas. In an in-flight emergency at these altitudes, any startle response experienced by on-board or remote pilots can lead to longer response times. This study aims to create a framework for contingency planning and risk mitigation using a Reachable Ground Footprint model for eVTOL aircraft under 100% power failure scenarios in-flight. This framework utilizes all existing, public aerodrome infrastructures in metropolitan areas as potential contingency landing sites. Metrics such as Contingency Landing Assurance Percentage and Cruise Altitude Floor requirement are introduced to quantitatively measuring the safety of any UAM trip and provide recommendations on safe cruising altitudes. A demonstration case in the Chicago Metropolitan Area between DuPage Regional Airport and John H. Stroger Hospital Helipad is shown and discussed. Furthermore, aggregate analysis of 434 UAM trips in Chicago Metropolitan Area between Regional Airports, between Regional and Heliports, and between Heliports is performed, along with sensitivity studies involving wind and turn control restrictions. The results discuss variations in Cruise Altitude Floor, Flight Time, and Energy Consumption of these trips using an eVTOL vehicle.</p>