Safety Assurance for Small Uncrewed Aerial Systems

Safety-critical software must deliver its required functionality while ensuring that the system is safe for its intended use. Typically, safety-critical software systems are developed using rigorous safety assurance practices, including, for example, Software Fault Tree Analysis or Software Failure Mode, Effects, and Criticality Analysis to identify hazards and derive mitigating safety requirements.
In our work we create Safety Requirements, Safety Assurance Artifacts, and also Runtime Monitoring support for esunring the safe operation of small Uncrewed Aerial Systems (Drones) for various application scenarios including, for example, Search-And-Rescue missions.

Dronology Research Incubator and Dataset

Dronology is an Open-Source Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) developed at the University of Notre Dame. The project has two main objectives:

• First, to establish a research environment and dataset for studying various aspects of software and systems engineering for cyberphysical systems -- e.g., runtime monitoring, safety analysis, and product line development.
• Second, to provide a framework for controlling and coordinating the flight of individual UAS, formations, and swarms in order to support applications such as search-and-rescue, surveillance, and scientific data collection.

These two goals are closely related -- as developing a research environment for investigating challenges in safety-critical software systems involves building a system with safety-critical implications. Visit our dronology website for more information: https://dronology.info