Recent advances in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have caused businesses and entrepreneurs to consider beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) UAV operation within their potential business function. Current business forecasts expect the UAV market to exceed $50B by 2025 [1]. A major obstacle in receiving certification in deploying such a system from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) revolves around avoiding aerial objects.

Per regulation, aircraft must employ a Transmitter Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) to broadcast their position and reduce the risk of airborne collision. Unfortunately, many aerial objects do not possess such transmitters: unlawful aircraft, parachutists, hot air balloonists. Standardized object avoidance needs to be developed and validated to receive FAA certification.

This project explores a scaled-down implementation of aerial avoidance of non-cooperative objects. The system comprises of a small-scale rotorcraft UAV that attempts to simulate potential collision scenarios of similarly scaled obstacles. To best represent a scaled representation of full- scale scenarios, the system uses only sensors analogous to sensing devices on full scale aircraft and plan obstacle avoidance using realistic maneuvers that could be performed by full scale aircraft. Due to the small reaction time associated with small scale testing, the system will perform avoidance maneuvers autonomously. Simple flight commands will notify a nearby base station of the maneuvers to show how a remote pilot could control the system.