Progress toward Modular UAS for Geoscience Applications
Abstract
Small Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) have become accepted tools for geoscience, ecology, agriculture, disaster response, land management, and industry. A variety of consumer UAS options exist as science and engineering payload platforms, but their incompatibilities with one another contribute to high operational costs compared with those of piloted aircraft. This research explores the concept of modular UAS, demonstrating airframes that can be reconfigured in the field for experimental optimization, to enable multi-mission support, facilitate rapid repair, or respond to changing field conditions. Modular UAS is revolutionary in allowing aircraft to be optimized around the payload, reversing the conventional wisdom of designing the payload to accommodate an unmodifiable aircraft. UAS that are reconfigurable like Legos™ are ideal for airborne science service providers, system integrators, instrument designers and end users to fulfill a wide range of geoscience experiments. Modular UAS facilitate the adoption of open-source software and rapid prototyping technology where design reuse is important in the context of a highly regulated industry like aerospace. The industry is now at a stage where consolidation, acquisition, and attrition will reduce the number of small manufacturers, with a reduction of innovation and motivation to reduce costs. Modularity leads to interface specifications, which can evolve into de facto or formal standards which contain minimum (but sufficient) details such that multiple vendors can then design to those standards and demonstrate interoperability. At that stage, vendor coopetition leads to robust interface standards, interoperability standards and multi-source agreements which in turn drive costs down significantly.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AGUFMNH31C..08D
- Keywords:
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- 9805 Instruments useful in three or more fields;
- GENERAL OR MISCELLANEOUS;
- 9820 Techniques applicable in three or more fields;
- GENERAL OR MISCELLANEOUS;
- 4333 Disaster risk analysis and assessment;
- NATURAL HAZARDS;
- 4339 Disaster mitigation;
- NATURAL HAZARDS