Making room for UAV air space

The Queensland University of Technology-led Australian Research Centre for Aerospace Automation has been commissioned by air-traffic management systems provider Thales to look at how controllers may have to deal with UAVs.

The study comes as the Civil Aviation Safety Authority reviews rules governing UAV flights as a result of the increasing demand, from border security to bushfire monitoring, power line surveillance and even whale tracking.

ARCAA director Duncan Campbell said the latest study, in collaboration with the Wackett Aerospace Research Centre at RMIT University, built on other areas of investigation at the centre. “It struck us that there hadn’t been much of a conversation around air-traffic management in controlled space,” he said.

“So we started thinking about what are the questions that really have to be answered in terms of procedures and technologies and all these sort of things. What did it look like on an air-traffic controller’s screen, for instance?”

Professor Campbell said the study would identify questions rather than provide answers, and was looking at CASA’s 2015-16 target dates for providing guidance materials and possibly revising the regulations. “So really it’s a study of what needs to be done.”

Among the issues will be the type of equipment UAVs will need to operate in or near integrated airspace and the type of aircraft required to carry it, as well as what controllers will need to be able to see, communicate with and separate the vehicles.

“So what we’re trying to do is say here are all the various options and the various scenarios that we can see, or at least that we need to research further and see what the real, viable solutions are,” Professor Campbell said.

ARCAA is also working on Project ResQu, a $7 million collaborative research project looking at key technical hurdles to the ability of UAVs to fly in civil airspace. These include projects that allow UAVs to detect and avoid other aircraft as well as to identify a safe landing site in the event of an emergency.

“We’re making some good advances with the see-and-avoid or detect-and-avoid technology and we’ve got some flight trials coming up with that,” Professor Campbell said. “And the research into the forced landing is progressing well. So that project’s due to wind up next year and we certainly hope to have some good results to share.”

QUT was recently the scene of a formation flight by a swarm of 30 small quadcopters as part of Robotronica.

The Spaxels-Quadcopter Swarm operated by Austrian-based Ars Electronica Futurelab allowed the centre to work with CASA on approvals for the visual display.

“CASA hadn’t seen such a thing before so we went through the process,” said Professor Campbell, who hoped the experience would help inform the regulator’s guidance materials and regulatory changes.

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