Visual aids for safe operation of remotely piloted vehicles in the controlled air space

The paper presents a set of visual aids for enhancing remote pilot perception of potential violations of allowed fly areas or conflicts with conventional air traffic when operating remotely piloted aerial vehicles. Assuming a video stream from an on-board camera is available to the remote pilot, visual aids are provided in a head-up display modality by means of reality augmentation techniques. The main visual element consists of a dynamic set of fences allowing for a safe aircraft separation away from no-fly zones and from neighboring vehicles. The shape of the fences is varied according to aircraft current speed and altitude, in order to allow for a sufficient safety margin, also in case of a loss-of-control accident. As a further visual aid, the predicted future position of the aircraft is determined and fence color is changed in order to highlight potential violations of the allowed operational area. The proposed methodology is validated by means of simulations in a reference operational scenario. Results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in improving pilot awareness.