Designing and Developing an Unmanned Aerospace System for the Federal Emergency Management Agency

Designing and Developing an Unmanned Aerospace System for the Federal Emergency Management Agency

Daniel J. Hall, Jr.

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

ASCI 530

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

December 8, 2013

Designing and Developing an Unmanned Aerospace System for the Federal Emergency Management Agency

This paper discusses the high and low level requirements for the design and development of an unmanned aerospace system (UAS) to be used by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for aerial survey of metropolitan areas severely impacted by an earthquake.  The request for proposal from FEMA details the following assumptions and guidelines for the design and development of the UAS:

·         The survey area will be assumed to be completely inaccessible by ground vehicles due to the destruction of infrastructure such as roads, bridges, and tunnels.

·         The use of unmanned aerospace systems is desired due to potential environmental hazards such as nuclear, biological, and/or chemical contamination.

·         The UAS will be used for electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) aerial survey of the metropolitan areas from an altitude of approximately 1000 feet above ground level (AGL).

·         The UAS will provide image quality sufficient for first responders to identify survivors, assess access routes, survey the extent of damage, and identify hazardous areas such as fires.

·         The UAS must be easily transported to the site and operational within two hours after arriving at the operations site.

·         The UAS will be required to be airborne day or night over the survey area for up to eight hours in moderate weather conditions up to and including light rain less than 0.5 inches per hour, winds less 20 miles per hour, light turbulence, non-icing conditions, and no lightning within 20 miles.

·         The UAS must be delivered by July 1, 2015.

In response to the above request for proposal and guidelines the UAS developer decides to use a Rapid Application Development (RAD) process to design, develop, and test the UAS.  They set an 18 month schedule for this project beginning on January 1, 2014 and ending on June 30, 2015.  The RAD process is chosen because it “produces systems more quickly and to a business focus…at lower costs” (Department of Health and Human Services, 2008, p. 8).  The UAS developer then defines the following requirements list.

Transportability

·         Entire system (all elements) shall be transportable via two full sized pick-up trucks

·         The UAS will be transported in hardened cases in the bed of truck one

·         The ground control station (GCS) will be transported in hardened cases in the bed of truck two

·         Each hardened case will weigh less than 50 pounds (one-person lift)

·         Electrical generator for operations site power will be transported in the bed of truck one

·         Fuels for UAS and generator will be transported in bed of truck two

·         Truck one will tow the UAS launcher

·         Truck two will tow the UAS recovery system

Cost

·         Shall be less than $150,000 for the UAS

·         Shall be less than $100,000 for the command and control (C2) system including data links

·         Shall be less than $50,000 for the EO/IR sensor

·         Shall be less than $50,000 for the launcher

·         Shall be less than $50,000 for the recovery system

Air vehicle element

·         Shall be capable of flight up to 1000 feet altitude above ground level (AGL)

·         Shall be capable of sustained flight (at loiter speed) in excess of eight hours

·         Shall be launched via a pneumatic launcher

·         Shall be recovered via a net system

·         Shall be operational within two hours after arriving at operations site

·         Shall be capable of day or night manual operation

·         Shall be capable of operating in moderate weather conditions up to and including light rain less than 0.5 inches per hour, winds less 20 miles per hour, light turbulence, non-icing conditions, and no lightning within 20 miles

·         Shall provide capture of telemetry, including airspeed, altitude (AGL), magnetic heading, latitude/longitude position, and orientation (i.e., pitch, roll, and yaw)

·         Shall provide power to payload, telemetry sensors, and data-link

·         Shall deploy will enough fuel for 24 hours of flight

Command & Control (C2)

·         Shall be laptop based

·         Shall provide moving map capability

·         Shall command UAS routing via laptop point and click mode

·         Shall be secure against hacking

·         Shall be hardened against radio interference from external sources

·         Shall be capable of manual operation

·         Shall provide emergency recovery operation in the event of lost signal/contact

·         Shall visually depict telemetry of air vehicle element

·         Shall visually depict payload sensor views

·         Shall be powered via operations site generator

Payload

·         Shall be secure against hacking

·         Shall be hardened against radio interference from external sources

·         Shall be capable of color daytime video operation up to 1000 feet AGL

·         Shall be capable of infrared (IR) video operation up to 1000 feet AGL

·         Shall be interoperable with C2 and data-link

·         Shall display EO/IR imagery on laptop computers

·         Shall be powered by the UAS electrical system

·         Shall be capable of switching between EO and IR mode

·         Shall be capable of 4X zoom

Data-link (communications)

·         Shall be secure against hacking

·         Shall be hardened against radio interference from external sources

·         Shall be capable of line of sight communication up to twenty miles

·         Shall provide emergency recovery operation in the event of lost signal/contact

·         Shall be powered by the UAS electrical system

·         Shall provide two bi-directional links for command and control

·         Bi-directional command and control links shall also transmit telemetry data from UAS to GCS.

·         Shall provide one mono-directional downlink to send the video data from the payload to the GCS.

Support equipment

·         Launcher shall be towed with truck one

·         Launcher shall be operational within two hours after arriving at operations site

·         Launcher shall be powered via self-contained generator

·         Recovery system shall be towed with truck two

·         Recovery system shall be operational within two hours after arriving at operations site

·         Recovery system shall be manually operated (requires no electrical power)

After the UAS developer has captured all the high and low level requirements as outlined above a schedule must be developed in order to meet the 18 month timeline.  The schedule is broken down into three distinct periods of system development, system ground testing, and system flight testing.  Based upon previous experience the UAS developer allocates ten months for system development, four months for system ground testing, and 4 months for system flight testing.  Armed with a detailed requirements list and schedule the UAS developer fully expects to develop, test, and field a UAS capable of meeting FEMA’s needs.

References

Department of Health and Human Services (2008, March 27). Selecting a development approach. Retrieved from http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/CMS-Information-Technology/XLC/Downloads/SelectingDevelopmentApproach.pdf