Towards an Integrated Vehicle Health Management for Maintenance of Unmanned Air Systems

Abstract

With rising numbers of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs) national and international authorities are currently negotiating the regulations for the operation of UASs. Even though UASs are smaller and less complex than manned aircraft, Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) aspects are not yet sufficiently considered. In a step towards safer and more autonomous operations of UASs, we intend to develop an Integrated Vehicle Health Management (IVHM) for Condition- Based Maintenance. This highly integrated system aims at constantly monitoring the health status of the UAS and at supporting all involved stakeholders. A necessity to IVHM is a vast data gathering process at different points in time as well as at different locations. Multi-stakeholder Digital Twins can achieve this by collecting the necessary data and allowing all stakeholders to base their decisions on the most up-to-date status of their system. We conclude this paper by demonstrating a first prototype operation under realistic conditions.