Estimation of Minimum Alerting Boundaries in Winds for Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems

Abstract

To achieve a level of safety equivalent to manned aircraft in the national airspace system, the pilot in command of small unmanned aircraft systems should be able to maintain situational awareness and make necessary maneuvers to avoid potential conflicts with nearby air traffic during midair encounters. However, due to ever-changing flight environments, the pilot in command often misestimates conflict risks and cannot engage the appropriate maneuvers to prevent midair traffic from violating the safety boundaries of small unmanned aircraft systems. To fix this problem, a Monte-Carlo-simulation-based method is therefore introduced and designed to quantitatively determine the alerting threshold boundaries in various wind conditions for detect-and-avoid systems to help the pilot in command identify hazards and trigger avoidance maneuvers before a safety boundary violation occurs.