UAS Mission

The recent changes that the FAA enacted in the Small UAS Rule 107, along with Section 333 Exemptions, allows the use of unmanned systems that will permit emergency management agencies to respond to incidents in a more effective manner.  However, industry has not responded to the need as of yet.  Most news articles are focused on the commercial delivery opportunities, such as Amazon Air Prime or agriculture applications (Amazon Prime Air, n.d.). 

There are numerous ways UAS can be used in the emergency management sector.  Major natural manmade and natural disasters have pointed to the use of UAS as being important to the response teams.  In the past events like Hurricane Katrina, and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, use of UAS showed their potential even if they were used in a limited capacity (Duncan and Murphy, 2014).   

This study looks at missions that are suitable of an incident response. Examples of viable platforms are discussed, considerations are provided, as well as, the benefits and challenges for these aerial vehicles. Legal and ethical challenges are discussed relative to the mission requirements.

Incident Response Missions

Emergency management personnel must react quickly to man-made and natural incidents.  In some cases, such as weather phenomena, they have time to prepare before the incident occurs, while in others, such as the Fukushima Daiichi incident there was minimal time to react.  In all cases, pre-planned responses need to be formulated and rehearsed. 

For the purpose of this study, let’s look at three missions the aerial vehicles can perform for the emergency management team.  The first is surveillance over the incident area, the second is sampling the environment, and the third conducting a search and rescue.  All three missions have unique requirements.  In some cases, the three vehicles could be used interchangeably to do one of the other missions.

The surveillance mission is a common mission that most UAS can do.  It mostly consists of a medium to long endurance asset with a capable electro-optic/infrared (EO/IR) camera system.  However, depending on the environment, the aerial vehicle can be quite different.  In an urban environment being able to maneuver between large structures may be a significant challenge, as can be the communications system required to support transmissions in a congested radio frequency (RF) environment.  Specialized communications may be required to stream full motion video back to the command center, or relay solutions can be implemented.

In the case of sampling the environment, the meteorological conditions may play a significant role on what asset the incident response team needs.  If the winds or water currents are strong, the contaminated cloud or liquid in the water may move quite rapidly away from the incident location.  The aerial asset may need to move rapidly to cover the affected area.  The ability to take an air sample is quite different than a soil or water sample.  But they may all be needed in an incident response such as in the Fukushima Daiichi incident.  It may be that different types of aerial vehicles with special attachment devices are used to take the particular sample.

Search and rescue operations occur frequently.  Whether it is a hiker or boat missing, time is of the essence.  Having an aerial vehicle that has significant endurance to meet the demands of doing a large search is of the essence.  The sensor package must be specific to the environment. 

While there are many options that can be applied to each of the three mission scenarios, the following section looks at three aerial vehicles that can provide services to each mission set.  The intent is to provide representative examples of what can be provided to assist response agencies or teams during an emergency incident.  Specific payloads are mentioned which are also representative of what can be used to support the mission requirements. 

Aerial Vehicles

Arcturus Jump-20

Arcturus Jump-20 is a hybrid fixed wing aircraft with a 16-hour endurance (Jump-20, n.d.). The primary propulsion system is an internal combustion engine on the nose of the aircraft.   It has two hardpoints on the wings where booms are attached to give it a vertical take-off and landing capability.  Each boom has two electric motors for vertical lift (Jump 20, n.d.).  This gives the operator great flexibility as it does not need a catapult launch nor arresting system, saving significant procurement costs.  The launch and recovery are full autonomous using the Latitude landing solution.

It is capable of carrying the Cloud Cap TASE 200 and 400 EO/IR cameras, which are gyro stabilized gimbaled day and night capable (TASE Imaging Systems, n.d.).  The aircraft is quite large for a Group 2 UAS, and capable carrying additional payloads in the fuselage. 

The advantage of using the Jump-20 is the flexibility to move the aircraft quickly using a van or other similar vehicle, VTOL, and ability to add additional payloads in a modular fashion. The primary EO/IR camera is very capable for this application.  Other sensors that can be incorporated are 3-D mapping, Synthetic Aperture Radar, LiDAR, communications relay equipment, and signal intelligence payloads.  The latter can be important in a search and rescue scenario discussed in a later section of this study. 

Jump-20 can be configured with 4G LTE cellular solution, such as a Lovica deployable software defined radio (SDR) (Lociva, n.d.). All the incident personnel can see the camera video feeds in real-time using smart phone and tablets.  This private network can also be connected to the commercial wireless networks and internet so the command center can also see the feed.   

Phoenix 30

            The Phoenix 30 is a multi-rotor UAV developed by UAS Solutions for government applications.  It is configured to have a modular designed to quickly change out payload configurations.  It normally flies with a EO/IR gimballed camera, and is capable of flying with additional payload to take environmental samples.  Like most UAV, it is limited in endurance to 30-35 minutes, but does carry a payload of two pounds (Phoenix 30, n.d.). 

            It is well suited in doing environmental sampling, particularly for ground and water applications where hovering over the objective may be appropriate.  There have been several papers written by Ore (2015) and his colleagues about water sampling using multi-rotors.  From their experiences, a properly equipped multi-rotor can save numerous hours in sampling the environment.  This assists incident management teams in collecting critical data within minutes to hours, verses days to weeks using traditional man intensive sampling methods.  One key observation by Ore and others developing multi-rotors for sampling application is that the accuracy of the multi-rotors autopilots using an internal barometer for altitude control is not sufficient.  An alternative solution using range finders is more appropriate.  In Ore’s project they used commercially available Maxbotix ultrasonic sensors and a customized Kalman Filter solution. This is typical for customized applications (Saez-Ortiz, 2016). 

Vanilla VA001

Vanilla is a long endurance aircraft capable of staying aloft for numerous days.  It uses a heavy fuel internal combustion engine (Vanilla, n.d.).  It is a cost efficient persistent surveillance aircraft that can sustain operations beyond those of current mid-sized aerial systems, which makes it a viable asset for search and rescue operations.  Along with a capable EO/IR, like the TASE series previously mentioned, a SAR, and a signal intelligence payload, this aerial aircraft can sustain long term search and rescue operation covering a large more effectively than can be provided by a manned aircraft today. 

The sensor suite can be augmented by artificial intelligence so that detections can be transmitted to the operations center.  Each sensor has unique inputs to find people such as object detection with the EO, heat detection with the IR, abnormal detections over water with the SAR, and a multiple of options with the signal intelligence payload.  Each sensor confirms the target of interest, and rejects non targets.

Considerations to the Mission

Emergency response personnel are overwhelmed with information during an incident response.  To effectively utilize unmanned aerial systems, the information obtained must be automatically processed and displayed to the operator.  In some cases, this may not be possible, particularly when sampling the environment.  Some of the sampling must be post processed.  In both scenarios, the data must be transformed into useful information that personnel can understand and quickly make decisions.

The aerial vehicle must also be automated and in some instances they must be autonomous.  For the same rational noted above, personnel don’t have the time to manage the assets during the incident.  If for a particular application, close management is required, a dedicated team other than the response team needs to manage the assets.

The considerations do need to be correlated to the mission.  The three airframes examples are uniquely designed for the mission.  With the exception of the ground/water sampling, each airframe may be able to do the other’s mission, but it is not intended to be interchangeable.  The intent is to use each one for the intended purpose.

Benefits and Challenges

            Aerial vehicles are well suited to support an incident response.  They can respond rapidly, cover large areas, provide persistent surveillance, and are relatively cost efficient.  There are parts of an incident response operations that an autonomous aerial vehicle can perform better than a human, such as provide surveillance, and take samples over a large areas.  While a manned aircraft may be able to do the same, there are cost prohibited and in some case limited by the human onboard. 

            There are numerous challenges to overcome before aerial vehicles are seen as viable assets to the incident response personnel.  Aside from the policy and regulation hurdles, there are technology challenges that need to be addressed before these systems can be seamlessly integrated into an incident response. What may work in a natural disaster, may not work in a nuclear or chemical incident.  Each type of incident must be analyzed to see where the business case can be made to insert an aerial vehicle. An analysis on the return on investment must justify the use of unmanned aerial vehicles vice vice using traditional methods.  

Legal and Ethical Concerns

            In this application there are no additional legal or ethical concerns, which have not been addressed in the approval of Part 107 or Section 333 Exemptions.  The use of these aerial vehicles will be for the benefit of the public.  Their use will be within the context that it will be for saving lives.  There should not be any expectation of privacy during their use.  Of course, policies should be in place so that the operators do not misuse these assets, particular during training missions.

            The use of signal intelligence technologies does not imply the use of communications interception equipment.  Technologies exist today that provide for the identification of individual telephones without violating E.O. 13333, or federal laws regarding the interception of electronic communications (Executive Order 12333).   

References

Amazon Prime Air. (n.d.). Retrieved September 14, 2016, from https://www.amazon.com/b?node=8037720011

Duncan, B. A. and Murphy, R. R. (2014), Autonomous Capabilities for Small Unmanned Aerial Systems Conducting Radiological Response: Findings from a High-fidelity Discovery Experiment. J. Field Robotics, 31: 522–536. doi: 10.1002/rob.21503

Executive Order 12333. (n.d.). Retrieved September 14, 2016, from http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/executive-order/12333.html

JUMP 20. (n.d.). Retrieved September 14, 2016, from http://arcturus-uav.com/product/jump-20

Lociva Deployable 4G LTE. (n.d.). Retrieved September 14, 2016, from http://lociva.com/radio-access/

Ore, John-Paul, Sebastian Elbaum, Amy Burgin, Baoliang Zhao, and Carrick Detweiler. "Autonomous Aerial Water Sampling." Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics Field and Service Robotics (2015): 137-51. Web.

Phoenix 30. (n.d.). Retrieved September 14, 2016, from http://uav-solutions.com/phoenix30/

Saez-Ortiz, R. (2016, March 10). Robotic Arm for a Multi-Rotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. [Scholarly project]. ASCI 531 – Robotics and Control

Section 333. (n.d.). Retrieved September 14, 2016, from http://www.faa.gov/uas/beyond_the_basics/section_333/

Summary of Small Unmanned Aircraft Rule Part 107 [Digital image]. (2016, June 21). Retrieved September 14, 2016, from https://www.faa.gov/uas/media/Part_107_Summary.pdf

TASE Imaging Systems. (n.d.). Retrieved September 14, 2016, from http://www.cloudcaptech.com/products/tase-imaging-payloads/

Vanilla Aircraft. (n.d.). Retrieved September 14, 2016, from http://www.vanillaaircraft.com/