ICARUS presentations at ATACCS with best paper award

ABSTRACT:
Technology evolution in the field of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) will affect the Air Traffic Management (ATM) performance regarding to new military and civil applications. UAS, as new airspace users, will represent new challenges and opportunities to design the ATM system of the future. The goal of this future ATM network is to keep intact (or improve) the network in terms of security, safety, capacity and efficiency level. On the other hand, most UAS are, at present, designed for military purposes and very few civil applications have been developed mainly because the lack of a regulation basis concerning their certification, airworthiness and operations. Therefore, UAS operations have always been solutions highly dependent on the mission to be accomplished and on the scenario of flight. The generalized development of UAS applications is still limited by the absence of systems that support the development of the actual operations. Moreover, the systematic development of UAS missions leads to many other operational risks that need to be addressed. All this elements may delay, increase the risk and cost in the implementation of a new UAS application.



ABSTRACT
This paper assesses the depart and approach operations of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) in one of the most  challenging scenarios: when flying under Visual Flight Rules (VFR). Inspired by some existing procedures for (manned) general aviation, some automatic and predefined procedures for UAS are proposed. Hence, standardized paths to  specific waypoints close to the airport are defined for depart operations, just before starting the navigation phase. Conversely, and for the approach maneuvers, it is foreseen a first integration into a holding pattern near the landing runway (ideally above it) followed by a standard VFR airfield traffic pattern. This paper discusses the advantages of these operations which aim at minimizing possible conflicts with other existing aircraft while reducing the Pilot-in-Command workload. Finally, some preliminary simulations are shown where these procedures have been  successfully tested with simulated surrounding traffic.