Failure Analysis for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Using Safe Path Planning
Chin E. Lin, Pei-Chi Shao
Abstract
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are sufficiently mature to operate in manned airspace. Failure analysis with a risk assessment is critical to aviation safety. Performance criteria are analyzed to determine how UAVs can be operated more safely. Any failures can cause casualties. This study assesses the crash probability density (CPD) using Newton’s laws of motion and Galileo’s free fall. Different UAVs that use horizontal and vertical takeoff and landing are studied with different classes of wing, weight, velocity, and altitude to simulate failure due to a crash. Different failure scenarios are simulated using MATLAB Simulink. Dynamic characteristics with disturbance are used to determine the probable coverage of impact on the ground. The results are used to construct a new type of path planning for a UAV, which uses the CPD radius to avoid highly populated areas. A risk assessment uses the expected level of safety (ELS) for the frontal impact area of UAVs. Using CPD path planning, the results show that the Fatality rate and the expected level of safety for a UAV correspond to a risk level of hour. This allows safer UAV flight planning.