Sensors and algorithms for UAV non cooperative collision avoidance

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles will have a safe access to the Civil Airspace only when they will be able to avoid collisions even with non cooperative flying obstacles. Thus, they need to replace the capability of human eye to detect potential mid-air collisions with other airframes and the pilot experience to find an adequate avoidance trajectory. This paper deals with sensors and processing logics required on-board to meet this goal. In particular, it refers to the research activities carried out by the Department of Aerospace Engineering of the university of Naples “Federico II” in collaboration with CIRA in the framework of TECVOL project. Pros and cons of different possible solutions are pointed out, and the selected hardware/software architecture for collision avoidance flight tests is described in detail. Off-line tracking simulation results confirm the potential of a multi-sensor approach to the flying obstacles detection and tracking problem