Adaptive and Online Health Monitoring System for Autonomous Aircraft

Abstract

Good situation awareness is one of the key attributes required to maintain safe flight, especially for an Unmanned Aerial System (UAS). Good situation awareness can be achieved by incorporating an Adaptive Health Monitoring System (AHMS) to the aircraft. The AHMS monitors the flight outcome or flight behaviours of the aircraft based on its external environmental conditions and the behaviour of its internal systems. The AHMS does this by associating a health value to the aircraft's behaviour based on the progression of its sensory values produced by the aircraft's modules, components and/or subsystems. The AHMS indicates erroneous flight behaviour when a deviation to this health information is produced. This will be useful for a UAS because the pilot is taken out of the control loop and is unaware of how the environment and/or faults are affecting the behaviour of the aircraft. The autonomous pilot can use this health information to help produce safer and securer flight behaviour or fault tolerance to the aircraft. This allows the aircraft to fly safely in whatever the environmental conditions. This health information can also be used to help increase the endurance of the aircraft. This paper describes how the AHMS performs its capabilities.