UAS Bramor Mission Planning

Introduction

Mission planning is the preparation, information gathering, and checklists that take place before a mission begins. An important aspect of this phase is the distinction of the level of autonomy that the UAS will have. A more autonomous mission will likely have more of a focus on planning because there is less direct control over the UAV and thus you are unable to react as readily to unpredicted situations.

Check-lists are a major part of pre-flight planning. A checklist will help ensure that all the necessary steps are completed and done in order, removing the chance that you could simply forget a step.

Working with the C3P software

For the first part of this lab we were asked to create a couple missions in varying conditions.

The first example was a mission that followed along the length of a road as seen in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Road Mission

That mission was created in the Bramor Test Fields in Slovenia. Because it the mission takes place in a flat area, there were not very many obstacles to look out for.

The next mission was created for the County Amphitheater in West Lafayette. This mission was created under the assumption that permission was obtained to operate in the nearby field. Figure 2 shows the mission.

Figure 2: Tippecanoe County Amphitheater

This mission is just far enough away from any airports that they don't need to be alerted of the activity. Apart from that, standard Part 107 regulations apply. Trees can be a problem in this area if you are gathering data from a low altitude.

The last planned mission was to be done in an agricultural yet mountainous region. Figure 3 shows my chosen mission path. 

Figure 3: Mountains can be a problem

As you can see, there are a lot of errors because of the highly varying elevation. To fix this, I bumped up the altitude of the flight and had the flight path be based on AGL rather than MSL. Figure 4 is the fixed version. 

Figure 4: No errors

Because this new version is so much higher, it has a much less dense flight path since each picture will be capturing a larger area. A lower elevation will have more detailed images but runs the risk of running into the mountain. A detailed inspection of  the mission area would help to offset these downsides.

Bramor Preflight

The preflight for the Bramor was mostly going down a several checklists and making sure that everything was still in order. 

The first part took place in-doors and involved checking that batteries were charged and that all the required pieces were accounted for. 

The second part took place outside and involved the assembly of the catapult system, the UAV itself, and the connection with the GCS. Figure 5 is an example of a page from the checklist. The checklist itself was translated to english from a different language (probably Slovenian) and had some difficult to understand phrases, but this didn't detract very much from the usefulness of the provided checklist.

Figure 5: List

The tablet that was used as the Ground Control Station could be used to plan the mission and execute it as well (It was basically just Windows on a tablet running the C3P software). 

Figure 6 is Professor Hupy demonstrating the proper setup for the catapult.

Figure 6: Catapult Rubbers

Figure 7 is the completed UAV ready to launch (well, as close as we got)

Figure 7: Setup complete

Conclusion

Mission planning for UAS is definitely the most important part of the mission. With the increasing automation of UAS, it is exceedingly important that the setup is correct and that all steps are followed when going through a checklist. Because they are so automated, it is more difficult to take manual control when you see something going wrong. A mistake on a platform like this could cost hours of time or even thousands of dollars depending on the severity of the mistake. Meticulous mission planning is the only way to ensure a successful mission.