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Application of a visualization environment for the mission performance evaluation of civilian UAS

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Abstract

Future unmanned aerial vehicle applications require the development of new advanced design environments. To get an effective unmanned aerial system, UAS, solution, it is necessary to take into account all elements of the system, e.g., to bring together aircraft design, payload, communication and other elements into one multidisciplinary design process. Compared to manned aircraft, an unmanned aerial vehicle, UAV, interacts with the environment through the onboard sensors. Therefore, the sensor and communication performances as well as their implementation in the whole system play an important role in mission fulfillment. To take the interaction with the operational environment into account, this operational environment is simulated during the design and assessment process. Owing to the high resolution and elevation-based terrain data, geometry representation of the UAS elements and its interaction with the environment, the sensor and communication performance is simulated, evaluated and fed back into the aircraft design process. For this, the following data are obtained during the mission simulation for the evaluation: height of the terrain, sensor coverage area, presence of uncovered areas, slant range to the ground or objects of interest, obstacles in line of sight, probability of an object detection and detection of the camera field of view limitations.

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Abbreviations

ACR:

Area coverage rate

b :

Sensor ground swath width

d c :

Object characteristic dimension

E :

Required energy for a mission

EACI:

Energy-rated area coverage index

f :

Degradation factor

FOV:

Field of view

ƒ :

Focal length of the camera

GSD:

Ground sample distance

GSDH :

Horizontal ground sample distance

GSDV :

Vertical ground sample distance

h :

Vertical distance from the sensor installed on the UAV to the ground

H :

Height of the object

HFOV:

Horizontal field of view

Hpix:

Number of horizontal pixels of the camera

LOS:

Line-of-sight vector of the camera

N :

Number of cycles across the target

P :

Distance between pixels of the camera

P():

Probability of achieving target discrimination task

R :

Slant range

UA:

Unmanned aircraft

UAV:

Unmanned aerial vehicle

UAS:

Unmanned aerial system

V :

Flight velocity

VFOV:

Vertical field of view

Vpix:

Number of vertical pixels of the camera

W :

Width of the object

θ Look :

Angle between the slant range and the sensor height over the ground

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Aircraft Design, Technical University of Munich, Boltzmannstraße 15, 85748, Garching, Germany

    E. Fokina, J. Feger & M. Hornung

Authors
  1. E. Fokina
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  2. J. Feger
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  3. M. Hornung
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Correspondence to E. Fokina.

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Fokina, E., Feger, J. & Hornung, M. Application of a visualization environment for the mission performance evaluation of civilian UAS. CEAS Aeronaut J 10, 817–825 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13272-018-0350-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13272-018-0350-z

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