UAS in medical application advantages and challenges

Research paper 6.4

Jingwen Cai

Due June 5^th, 2016.

Imagine public use of UAS for the medical emergency service when your family member has heart attack or broken bone, you may not expect a big red fire truck with a white ambulance showing up at your door at all. Instead, a UAS may show up at your patio or backyard to take your bio send the information to the doctor in emergency room, or let you load the patient inside the UAS and flight him/her to hospital.

There are three platforms capable of performing the medical emergency service.  

The rotorcraft UAS platform is vertical take-off and landing, which has advantage of landing in the residential area, either at the drive way, the backyard, or the roof of the apartment or office building.  It doesn’t require the run way or big open field for landing or take off. This will help to deliver the fresh donor human organ between hospitals, pick up the patient and send to the emergency room without delay due to the traffic.

The fixed wing UAS platform has advantage of long distance travel, and transport higher payload. For example, if one hospital needs some equipment that is only available in another facility, then a fixed wing UAS can be assigned to transport this heavy equipment. It not only can help to transport the medical supplies to remote area, but also to dangerous area where manned aircraft is too risky.  The UAS may drop off the supplies in the dangerous without being detected because it is smaller, quieter than manned aircraft.

The min UAS platform is unique to the unmanned aircraft.  The mini UAS can be sent to high contagious area to take bio and sample from the patients and do instant analysis for blood samples if microchip payload is added. The UAS will not breath the virus filled air and still have the job done.

The benefits associated with performing the medical care response for the UAS mission are: cost effective, shorten response time, flexible in location and time, applicable to remote or dangerous areas.

The Challenges associated with performance the particular UAS mission are not limited on how to operate a UAS, or where to get a permit. It is the long time to have many UAS platforms certificated, because UAS platforms must comply with safety standards for technology, such as DO-178 B and C for flight-critical software, as well as DO-254 for hardware, explains RTI (UAO staff, 2016).

Two legal or ethical challenges to the medical emergency missions are people’s concern of safety, and unintended trespass. The safety concern is due to accident from design, communication, reliability, and operation mistakes.  Who will be responsible for UAS accidents where the owner or the operator is not at the crash scene? The space boundary and trespass is a drag of war because of the UAS intrusion and ambiguous airspace definition.  How many feet above your backyard is your space? How many feet from your parked car in the drive way is your airspace that neighbor’s UAS service can’t go in? (Duno, 2015).

Reference:

UAS platforms. Retrieved on June 3d from https://www.icarus.upc.edu/en/facilities/experimental-facilities

Emergency Medical. Retrieved on June 3^rd, 2016 from http://www.uas-core.com/#!emergency-medical/xdefv

Duno, D. 2015. Unmanned Aircraft in the National Airspace: Critical Issues, Technology, and the Law

UAO staff. March 2016. Upcoming Webinar: ‘Solving Avionics Safety Certification Challenges in UAS Platforms’. Retrieved on June 3^rd, 2016, from upcoming-webinar-solving-avionics-safety-certification-challenges-in-uas-platforms

UAS Separation from UAS

Jingwen Cai

ERAU ASCI 530 Research Assignment

The monitoring and maintaining of the separation of the unmanned aerial systems from the NAS is through the current FAA regulations and heavily rely on modern technologies.  The FAA notice N JO 7210.873 provides information and interim guidance on air traffic policies and prescribes procedures for the planning, coordination, and services involving the operation of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) in the national airspace system (NAS).

The separation of the UAS requires a letter of agreement (LOA) if there is conflict, and each UAS must apply for a certificate of waiver or authorization (COA) before a specific UA’s activity is authorized. The FAA will review the UAS basic information, such as method of air traffic control (ATC) communications, surveillance capability, system monitoring/recording capability, flight plan, and reports of past incidents or accidents. 

The UAS shall have the sense-and-avoid method that provides an equivalent level of safety comparable to see-and-avoid requirements for manned aircraft. Technologies used to meet this requirement includes, but not limited to, radar observations, forward-or side-looking cameras, electronic detection systems, visual observation from ground sites, monitoring by patrol or chase aircraft, or a combination there of. 

UAs are required to be equipped with standard aircraft anti-collision or navigation lights following in 14 CFR, section 23.1401, and an altitude encoding transponder that meet the specification of 14 CFR, section 91.215.  The transponder must  be set to operate on a code assigned by ATC. In the event of lost link, the UA must squawk code 7600.

Direct two-way radio communication with ATC and the UA pilot is required at all times. This will ensure the monitoring and maintaining of the UA flying in the NAS at all time.  

For the difference airspaces, UAS is not allowed to operate in class B at this time, but all other airspaces.

For different sizes of the UAS, the requirement is a little different. The UAS manufacturer goes through a 3 to 5 year process to obtain a type certificate, which enables the issuance of a standard airworthiness certificate according to FAA requirement.  The pilots of small UAS is also required to pass an initial aeronautical knowledge test and obtain an unmanned aircraft operator certificate with a small UAS rating.

In 2012, Congress passed the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012 (Public Law 112-95). In section 333 of Public Law 112-95, Congress also directed the Secretary to determine whether “certain unmanned aircraft systems may operate safely in the national airspace system.”

FAA encourages to develop and integrate UAS enabling technologies within the NAS infrastructure. UASs aren’t a part of NextGen, but NextGen technology such as NVS will play a role in their safe integration in to the NAS. NVS, which takes advantage of modern router-based communications, will enable FAA to route, monitor and share information among facilities across the country. System Wide Information Management (SWIM) is the data-sharing backbone of NextGen, which distributes the weather and flight planning information to the NAS. The Flight information exchange model (FIXM) is developed to serve as a global standard for sharing data about flights. ERAM is the next generation computer system for en route centers, which control high-altitude traffic. Data Comm is for delivering message via digital format. 

In summary, the roadmap for UAS merging into the NAS is planned and quickly getting updated with new technology innovations.

Reference:

N JO 7210.873. July 11, 2014. Unmanned Aircraft operations in the national airspace systems (NAS). Retrieved on May 29, 2016 from http://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Notice/N_JO_7210.873_Unmanned_Aircraft_Operations.pdf

Unmanned Aircraft Systems, Federal Aviation Administration. https://www.faa.gov/uas/

Billing Code 4910-13-P DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION Federal Aviation Administration 14 CFR Parts 21, 43, 45, 47, 61, 91, 101, 107, and 183 [Docket No.: FAA-2015-0150; Notice No. 15-01] RIN 2120–AJ60 Operation and Certification of Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems. Retrieved on May 29, 2016 from https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/rulemaking/recently_published/media/2120-AJ60_NPRM_2-15-2015_joint_signature.pdf

NextGen. FAA. Retrieved on May 29. 2016 from http://www.faa.gov/nextgen/media/NextGenUpdate2014.pdf

UAS comprehensive plan, JPDO. The secretary of Transportation. Nov 6, 2013.Retrieved on May 29, 2016  from http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/agi/reports/media/UAS_Comprehensive_Plan.pdf

ASCI 530 – Unmanned Systems

Module 7 – Systems Development and Test & Evaluation (T&E)

Activity 7.4 – Assignment: Request for Proposal – RFP

Jingwen Cai

RobinRobin, is a fire drone, or a UAS that is designed for natural disaster such as wild fire is proposed in this paper. This will include overview of design considerations, decisions for derived request including transportability, cost, air vehicle frame, control and command, pay load and data-link. Test requirement and verification schedule is also included.

UAS  development has sequential phases listed below. Some overlap and splashback may exists between phases. Formal review and approval by the user and management is at the end of the most phases before the beginning of the next phases to ensure it meet the requirement and avoid the risk. This is called “passport” at some design company because without the passport, the project can’t be forwarded to the next phase.

Table 1, RobinRobin UAS project flows based on the “selecting a development approach”, 2005.

	Project Phases	Time	Principles
1	Initial Investigation	3 months	Focus on market research and user’s requirement
2	Requirement Definition	1 month	Clear objectives and agreement with stakeholders
3	System Design	2 month	Focused on developing  engineering specification
4	Coding, testing, DFMEA	4 month	Small scale mock-ups, ground testing, inflight testing,
5	Implementation	4 month	Based on the prototype, then large scale with learnings
6	Operation & Support	2 years	Real time support, training and technical transfer

From the initial investigation, RobinRobin UAS will fulfill some basic requirements as outlined below:

·         Day and night operations

·         High temperature tolerance

·         Various altitude operation

·         Hover at a certain spot for a certain time to do surveillance and putting off fire

·         Real time surveillance and feedback for fire and ground situation to ground station

·         Large capacity to carry and spray chemicals to extinguish fires

Translate these requirement into technical language, we can list these into system design requirement

·         Radius of action is defined as the maximum distance that the RobinRobin can travel away from the base with payload and return to base after the mission without refueling. Users asked for 5 miles because it is a safe distance for the ground operation from a wild fire zone.

·         The endurance at the radius of action is largely based on the payload and fuel amount.

·         Payload and aircraft frame shall be able to provide information on the location of the fire edge, the intensity and location of hotspots

·         Can “see” through the smokes.

·         Communication shall be compactable to those helicopters, air-tankers, ground station.  It shall send the fire and ground situation to the manned aircraft and commanders.

The low level requirement for RobinRobin is listed as below:

·         Cost

o   The budget cap is $20,000 each for hardware only, not including the training, maintenance, and operation cost.

o   Off shelf component shall be the first choice to reduce the cost

o   The cost for pilot license, flight plan approval cost, and other FAA required permit doesn’t included here.

·         Aircraft Vehicle

o   Shall be capable of flight up to 500 feet altitude above ground level (AGL)

o   Shall be capable of flight two hours without refueling

o   Shall be capable of covering an operational radius of 5 miles

o   Shall be deployable and on station in less than 10 minutes

o   Shall provide capture of telemetry, including altitude, magnetic heading, latitude position, longitude position and orientation

o   Shall be capable for Vertical launching and landing

o   Shall have Power plant that do not have risks of fuel burning or leaking at the fire zone

o   Shall have the material on the outside surface with heat resistant coating every where

o   Shall be capable to carry the payload of five kilograms

·         Control and command

o   Shall provide wireless radio or satellite communication with ground station

o   Shall have the capability to detect and avoid other manned aircraft

o   Shall have capacity to be operated at line of sight in case the radio signal or satellite communication doesn’t work in remote regions

·         Payload

o   Electronic sensor that can “see” through smoke to detect people or animal on the ground

o   hot spot and provide GPS coordinate of the hot spot

o   Shall be capable of carrying and spraying a small amount of fire distinguisher that is enough to kill the fire with 10 feet diameter to save lives if other airplanes are not available.

o   All payload shall have fire protection coating

·         Datalink

o   Shall use power provided by air vehicle element

o   Shall be capable of communicate with the ground station with the range of five miles.

o   Shall be capable to send real time pictures of hot spots and their GPS coordinates to the ground control station

o   Shall have

o  

·         Transportability

o   The entire system shall be transportable in a hardened case with the size fit in a regular van or large four wheel drive truck

o   The total weight including the payload shall be less than 100 lb, assuming two people can carry and move the case.  

Testing:

·         Reliability

o   Each subsystem shall be tested separately.

o   Although Bell 407 is a mature helicopter with more than 1, 400 airframes produced and over 4 million flight hours, the modified and minimized version of Bell 407 shall be treated as a new platform that need both ground test and in-flight test.

·         Ground test:  5000 hours is required and failure rate is less than 10%

·         In-flight test: 5000 hours is required and failure rate is less than 1%.

·         Environmental test

o   Different altitude to simulate the mountain area or seal level

o   Shall have the capacity to fly in the hot Desert area,

o   Shall have the capacity of stable flying through high wind area

o   Shall have the capacity to fly through dense smoke area with constant communication to the ground station at the same time.  Less than 5% glitches or dropped communication in this test is allowed. 

·         Launching and retrieving rate

o   Shall meet 10 minutes requirement from opening the case to the RobinRobin get airborne.

o   Shall allow only two people to operate the launching and retrieving during the test, without any helpers or tools that is not included in the design

In summary, the RobinRobin is a new affordable fire scout and fire extinguisher that helps experts to detect, control, and extinguish wild fires and save lives.  It has capacity to see through the smoke, provide location of hot spots, and drop chemicals at small area if needed. It is easy to operate and only need two people to operate.  The development phase is 14 months minimum, and with ongoing operation support and large volume production in the coming years.