Fielding a Sense and Avoid Capability for Unmanned Aircraft Systems: Policy, Standards, Technology, and Safety Modeling

Unrestricted access to civil airspace requires the ability to see-and-avoid other aircraft. While an on-board pilot normally provides this capability, unmanned aircraft systems must develop an alternate means of compliance with the see-and-avoid regulations, that is a sense and avoid capability is required to gain flexible airspace access. This article outlines an analytical methodology for the rigorous definition of sense and avoid standards, development of requirements for technology components, assessment of system architectures, and demonstration of system safety. The methodology described is applied to a ground-based sense and avoid testbed being developed for the US Army. This testbed validates requirements derived from analysis and demonstrates an end-to-end capability to be used in the national airspace.