Safety

Safety Requirements

In accordance with the CONOPS, the following safety requirements have been traced, with the remedies listed accordingly.

Safety Requirement	Solution

Safety Requirement	Solution
UAV must have a kill switch mechanism to immediately terminate flight - aircraft must be in termination mode within 10 seconds of the termination function being activated	Kill switch mechanism firmware is implemented through our Safety chip, which will kill power to all actuators on the UAV in the event the manual control communication link is lost Kill switch is activated by severing control communication link
In the event of the UAV leaving flight boundaries, it should be possible for the operator to either bring it back or to activate the kill mechanism	Manual control of the UAV will be possible at all stages of operation, thus permitting the UAV to return to normal flight operations
Safety pilot must be able to manually control the aircraft in case of malfunction	A dedicated command and control link is added to allow for manual control of the UAV at all times
There must be an electrical or mechanical way of preventing propellers from accidentally spinning when the aircraft is not in takeoff position and ready for takeoff	The battery connector of the UAV must be engaged for the propellers to spin under power. Thus, disconecting and verifying the battery connector is not engaged will prevent the propellers to spin under power.

The additional safety requirements not established by CONOPS but required for safe operation are listed below:

Safety Requirement	Solution

Safety Requirement

Solution

UAV should not be flown near people and nearby objects

As per the CARs, operation of the UAV is not permitted to any nearby person not involved in the operation within 30m. A safety perimeter will be setup when testing to ensure collisions with other people and objects is not possible.

A FPV camera for the pilot will be onboard to track obstacles within the flight path. The operation will employ other visual observers to relay to the pilot if there is potential for a collision.

UAV shall have standardized checklists for the emergency situations established by Transport Canada

As per the CARs, checklists for emergency situations such as lost link, fly-away, etc shall be prepared for the UAV.

Single point of failure modes

The following single point of failures are noted for the UAV WARG is designing:

Failure Modes	Plan to address

Failure Modes	Plan to address
Loss of communication link	Ensure that a loss of communication triggers the kill switch to prevent harm
Safety firmware failure	Implement a watchdog that will restart the firmware in a fast method that will default to manual control to allow for the UAV to be controlled.
Motor/Motor controller failure	Motor/Motor controller failure will result in the UAV crashing under all circumstances.
Low battery/loss of power	A dedicated battery management and monitoring system will be installed to monitor battery status and ensure that the drone is not flown in low battery situations. Battery/power distribution system failure will result in the UAV crashing under all cirsumtances.

Other

Talk about gimbal onboard the camera and ground station, specifically how the pilot will use these resources to avoid crashing into various objects
- @Shrinjay Mukherjee this is yours to delegate