Modifications to ACAS safety study methods for remotely piloted vehicles (RPV)
Summary
Estimating the relative safety of a Remotely Piloted Vehicle (RPV) equipped with ACAS will require several extensions to the methods developed in previous ACAS studies. This paper outlines several of these redesign issues. First, it may be necessary to compute the probability that an RPV will experience a critical encounter relative to that for a conventional aircraft. Performing a safety study on only the incremental impact of equipping an RPV with ACAS would circumvent this need. Additionally, methods are proposed to adapt existing encounter models to better represent the likely characteristics of encounters with RPVs. Finally, modifications to the level of detail included in dynamic simulations and fault trees are discussed. It is proposed to shift all dynamic elements out of the fault tree and into a new more complex Monte Carlo simulation.