Abstract

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Airport Technology Research and Development Branch conducted a research effort to explore the use of unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) for documenting aircraft accident and incident scenes at airports. The objectives of this research effort were to assess the benefits and limitations of UAS for this application, and to develop minimum performance specifications and technical and operational considerations for using UAS to document aircraft accidents and incidents.

This research effort consisted of UAS flight testing at Atlantic City International Airport (ACY) and Cape May County Airport (WWD), and outreach to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which currently uses UASs to document aircraft accidents and incidents. During testing, mapping missions were conducted using a variety of UAS platforms and sensors over simulated emergency scenarios at each airport. These missions involved collecting image data with a variety of flight parameters, including varying forward and side overlaps and ground sample distances (GSDs). Data were processed with several software packages to generate two-dimensional (2D) orthomosaic maps of the scenes, which were evaluated to determine which hardware, software, and flight parameters resulted in the most efficient flight operations and the highest quality outputs.

This report provides a comprehensive summary of the testing conducted and recommended UAS platform and payload specifications. FAA researchers found that UASs equipped with camera payloads were effective tools for generating orthomosaics of aircraft accident and incident scenes for documentation purposes. Based on the testing results, FAA researchers set minimum performance specifications, including a minimum camera image resolution of 12 megapixels. FAA researchers recommend collecting mapping data with the camera in a nadir orientation (straight downward), with a minimum GSD of 1 in. and forward- and side-overlap values of 80% and 70%, respectively.