(Week Five)Situational awareness and the pros and cons of automation.

Situational Awareness is not only a term for how to survive in an emergency or life threatening situation, but is also an idea that is necessary for the safe, controlled flight within an operational area for a UAV. Situational awareness, as defined by Mica Endlsey of SA Technologies is, "The perception of the elements in the environment within a volume of time and space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their status in the near future" (Endlsey, 1998) Unlike manned aviation, unmanned piloting takes a very specific set of skills. Piloting an aircraft that you are not moving through space with requires a higher sense of "staying in front of the airplane". You are are required to rely on external resources and sensors to properly fly and react to the environment. Many of the time, you may not be able to see all the obstacles to the UAV as you have a very restrictive perspective not being "on-board" the aircraft. Navigating from this altered, unnatural, point of view is an extremely important skill that falls under situational awareness for piloting UAV's.

The level of difficulty then increases when your viewpoint changes from First Person View (FPV) to moving the camera towards the target for data collection. Without some sort of supplemental telemetry data for UAV position or external visual observer, the level of situational awareness needed to safely operate the aircraft increases exponentially. A common problem is to rely on telemetry data for positional awareness during a flight. This is especially true when the operator becomes complacent and does not perform the proper pre-mission planning.

The idea of being "situationaly aware" applies to the up-coming UAS capstone missions is the fact that new or unfamiliar aircraft are being used within alien to the course environments. The Tippecanoe County Amphitheater has many obstacles within the operation area that must be accounted for starting with pre-mission planing all the way through recovery. The area is surrounded by trees and dense forest, the Wabash river to the west, and multiple man-made structures throughout the park area.

TCA, as seen from the East field

All of the obstacle need to be accounted for and included in the situational check and understanding of the proposed flight area. An additional level of SA is the planned recovery area is a soccer filed with soccer goals scattered about. This will prove to be an issue as the primary platform needs a 100m radius circle for safe recovery due to the fact that it is recovery method is by parachute. With the wind causing drift during recovery situational understanding must be accounted for and the risk be mitigated to the lowest level for a safe operation.

Soccer Field at TCA (proposed landing site)