UAS@LU: Autonomous Flight

This research project addresses and develops the technologies of unmanned flying systems (UAS or drones) in order to make such systems more suitable for addressing various social challenges. A current collaboration project (UAV@LU, currently changing name to UAS@LU) addresses the potential of UAS for addressing societal challenges including, but not limited to, more efficient and sustainable forestry and farming, urban planning and landscape modelling, monitoring of critical infrastructure system, smarter transport, as well as more efficient and safe emergency service operations. A problem shared across all sectors mentioned above is making the UAS autonomous; the transition from actively piloting a drone with continuous (human) control inputs from a remote ground station while having the drone within visual line of sight to an autonomous UAS solving complex problems without continuous human control inputs but as an autonomous agent beyond the visual line of sight in an airspace populated by unmanned as well as manned aircraft. Consequently, the here proposed research project aims at developing and demonstrating autonomous flight missions in an airspace with mixed autonomous and manned aircraft under supervision and management of air traffic control. While the actors in the UAS@LU network represent a vast number of possible applications for autonomous UAS systems; this project will focus on two applications which are being developed with the purpose of enhancing societal safety: the cases of autonomous radiation detection and Sear-And-Rescue (SAR). The project serves the wider purposes of the collaboration UAS@LU and is conducted by Lund University School of Aviation and the Lund University Dept. Automatic Control in close collaboration with research conducted at the departments for Nuclear Physics and Medical Radiation Physics. External actors include those involved in Testbed Ljungbyhed as well as actors collaborating with LU researchers in UAS applications for societal safety.