THE ALLOWABLE AIRSPACE AND PATH PLANNING OF CIVIL UNMANNED AIR VEHICLES IN TAIWAN

摘要

The sharing of airspace by both manned aircraft and unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) has been an issue for decades. In recent years the fast growth of civil UAV activities has led to concern regarding their threat to aviation safety. Hence, it is becoming more important to establish regulations for UAV operation. The regulations must not only prescribe the performance and equipment of UAVs, but also prescribe the allowable airspace for UAV activities. At present, no country allocates airspace explicitly for UAV activities and Taiwan is no exception. This study demarcates the allowable airspace for five classes of UAVs (Micro, Mini, Tactical, MALE, HALE) by using the towns of Taiwan as a minimum unit. The demarcation was done using mean time between failure (MTBF) as an index indicating the reliability of a UAV. Geographical data, restricted airspace and controlled airspace were also considered in order to obtain viable operational airspaces. A database of MTBF and geographical data of every town with respect to a certain required level of safety was built up over the entire country. In addition, by using the database, demonstration of UAV shortest flight path planning by implementing the A* method is presented in this paper.