DOT/FAA/TC-22/29 Authors: Jonathan Sheairs, Garrison Canter, and Jack Kreckie
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Airport Know-how Analysis and Improvement Department performed a analysis effort to discover the usage of small unmanned plane techniques (UASs) to enhance the situational consciousness and effectiveness of plane rescue and firefighting (ARFF) personnel when monitoring the response to an ongoing ARFF accident/incident. The aim of this effort was to develop minimal advisable efficiency specs and technical/operational issues for the usage of UAS to help ARFF response.
This analysis effort was performed in three phases. The primary two phases consisted of testing of assorted UASs and sensor payloads at Atlantic Metropolis Worldwide Airport to develop preliminary minimal efficiency specs and finest practices for use UASs throughout an ARFF response. Part 1 consisted of daylight testing, whereas Part 2 consisted of daylight, twilight, and nighttime testing. The third part was performed at Dallas/Fort Value Worldwide Airport’s Hearth Coaching Analysis Heart along side two of their Superior Methods and Ways for Aviation Incidents courses. Throughout Part 3, UASs have been flown throughout live-fire coaching workouts whereas offering responders with the dwell payload feed to guage the advantages and limitations of UASs and validate the advisable efficiency specs and technical/operational issues for use UASs throughout an ARFF response.
This report offers a complete abstract of the testing performed and advisable UAS platform and payload specs. Primarily based on evaluation of footage and suggestions collected throughout testing, UASs geared up with thermal and visible cameras have been discovered to supply a major situational consciousness profit to incident commanders in quite a lot of ARFF response eventualities. FAA researchers set minimal efficiency specs, together with minimal live-streamed video resolutions of 1280 horizontal pixels x 720 vertical pixels (720p) for visible cameras and 640 horizontal pixels x 512 vertical pixels for thermal cameras.
