SysBrain has recently completed its Innovate UK Project No. 132303 on how to verify autonomous decisions onboard a small UAS along its complete mission from take-off to automated landing. Assuming the autopilot and onboard sensor system, including the GPS, magnetometer, scanning lidar and optical odometers perform correctly with known frequencies of failures for a given area of the UAS flight, our new system is able to compute probability of successful completion of a mission, the likelihood of partial success or the likelihood of breaching privacy laws. the likelihood of an emergency landing is needed or whether the worse happens and the UAS would crash. These probabilities are very important for the pilot in charge of the flight to make responsible decisions on

SysBrain's SecureFlightTM software system accepts the following specifications for multi-rotors:

1. Frequency of single ESC/motor failure per 50 hours of flight.
2. Frequency of double ESC/motor failure per 50 hours of flight.
3. Frequency of autopilot failure per 50 hours of flight.
4. Frequency of premature battery discharge per hour.
5. Frequency of people and ground vehicles appearing per hour.
6. Frequency of other aircraft, birds and flying objects appearing per hour
7. Frequency of GPS localization failures per hour.
8. Frequency of collision avoidance system failures per 50 hours of flight.
9. Frequency of parachute system failure per 50 hours of flight.

The primary purpose of SecureFlight is not only to assess flight safety to the public and its property but also

1. (1) the safety and survival of the generally expensive UAS and
2. (2) the safety of productive mission execution within the time frame intended.

The latter is to prevent wasteful use of the time of the company personnel. Naturally, the onboard decision making system aims to mitigate the consequences of hardware problems during the flight. The onboard software system also makes decision in the interest of the successful completion of the UAS flight. The assessment of (1) and (2) needs therefore to be carried out by taking into account the onboard decisions while the UAS flies autonomously though remotely monitored by a pilot in charge. SysBrain's revolutionary SecureFlight methodology provides tools to develop the decision making system in a transparent manner using English sentences using SysBrain's sEnglish pilot agent programming environment, which is illustrated below.

This high level programming system serves those who wish to develop their own decision making system for BLOS flights. This serves both large coorporations as well as hobbyists. Having defined onboard decisions, the probabilities of mission deficiencies or the likelihood of severe failures, including loss of the UAS or injury to the public, can be studied by the SecureFlight Software.

If you wish to adopt our SecureFlight system for your company's UAS operation, please contact us on info (at) sysbrain.com to obtain a quote. Note however that we do not currently support hobbyists or research organisations with SecureFlight.

August 2017