Active Risk Mitigation for Unmanned Aerial Systems

Efforts are underway to introduce Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) into routine cargo operations within the National Airspace System (NAS). Many argue that UAS operations will be riskier than operation with pilots onboard the aircraft because there are no humans onboard to respond to off-nominal events. In this paper, we present a safety assessment methodology where agent-based modeling and rare event estimation are used to determine the risks due to component and system failures, and thereby accident probabilities. The methodology is applied to the final approach and landing phases of flight within the context of an investigation of the performance required from decision-making agents when wind shear, navigation errors, and engine failures occur. Results indicate that the online safety assessment methodology is able to actively mitigate risk and provide the autonomous system safety performance required to comply with FAA airworthiness regulations.