AEROSPACETESTINGINTERNATIONAL.COMAPRIL 2015 |^65
Civilian UAS – Australia z
W
ith the ability to take on the
dirty, dull and dangerous
tasks currently performed
by manned aircraft and helicopters,
unmanned aerial systems (UASs) are
rapidly establishing a large footprint
in the military orders of battle across
the globe. Although many of these
platforms actually had their origins in
the civil sector, regulators around the
world have been slower to adapt to the
new technology; civilian operation of
UASs, despite their increasing use, is
not as widespread or as accepted as
military operations.
However, that is changing, and in
Australia, which is well placed from a
geopolitical perspective to harness the
utility of the UAS, the testing and
development of such systems across a
broad range of applications is, in some
respects, leading the rest of the world.
Given the country’s vast size and
wealth of resources, its harsh climate
and relatively small population, there
are many tasks now being undertaken
by unmanned vehicles. Applications
such as search and rescue, border
protection, resource exploration and
management, and bushfire monitoring
are high on the wish lists of civilian
and paramilitary organizations.FOLLOWING REGULATIONS
Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety
Authority (CASA) is one of the world
leaders in the development of
regulations for the civilian use of
unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and,
together with organizations such as the
Australian Association for Unmanned
Systems (AAUS), is developing a wholeLockheed Martin’s
Indago Quadcopter
has been used with
great success in
the monitoring of
bushfires in
Western Australia
range of systems, from handheld UASs,
to the large and high-flying Global
Hawk and Predator platforms.
Speaking at the Defence Summit
in Darwin in late 2013, then executive
director of AAUS Peggy MacTavish
noted that Australia is at the leading
edge of this work and in some cases
more advanced than the International
Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
“We have to be very careful that
we’re enabling the domain in the best
possible way, and when you are doing
that from scratch, you can imagine the
opinions and difficulties out there,”
she said. “The big challenge will be
to set those international standards
and be involved in the direct shaping
of the regulations that we would like
to see in place.”
The AAUS considers the testing of
UAVs with respect to type certification
another challenge for the UAS industry,
and development work needs to
continue, particularly in the
manufacture and control of components.SMART SKIES
A recent example of the testing work
being done in the UAS field in
Australia is the Smart Skies project,
which was a three-year program to
explore the research and development
of technologies to allow manned and
unmanned platforms to share the
same airspace.
Smart Skies engaged academia
and industry to explore the viability
of technology such as an automated
separation management system, sense
and act systems for manned and
unmanned aircraft (collision avoidance