UAS System Safety Features
The heart of any UAS autopilot system should hold safety as a paramount feature.
The Hawk system gives safety matters top priority and features many monitoring options should a fault occur.
Some of these are listed here and others are in testing or development.
Skycam UAS system safety features
- Startup health checks: Take off is disabled if the aircraft is not flight ready.
- Return on link fail option retraces planned route in the event of link loss/failure.
- In-flight Terrain collision detection (based on terrain elevation model) gives audible warning that collision with terrain is immanent.
- Constant in flight checking for Minimum Safe Altitude (MSA) with audible warning if descending below MSA.
- Waypoint route checks for terrain collision and no line of sight (LOS).
- Audible warnings for detected problems.
- Battery consumption monitoring to estimate remaining flight time, GCS display of maximum return range together with audible warnings for point of no return.
- Dead reckoning mode in the event of GPS failure or jamming.
- GPS/Barometric altitude trade-off adjustment provides altitude redundancy.
- Emergency landing point preset options for fully automated recovery during a link failure.
- Manual flight termination (parachute release)
- Automatic flight termination - based on internal system health monitoring software. Identifies over limits of pitch and roll attitudes.
- External electrically isolated flight termination system that releases the parachute in the event of a critical autopilot power or control failure
- Software selectable strobe light for night operations.
- GCS display warnings when entering Direct Control Mode.
- Ground station aircraft handover/recovery option on GCS failure.