Drone Flight Controller Reliability Analysis within EU Standardization

Abstract: As the drone market expands, the corresponding standardization follows. Drone standardization can vary geographically based on the regulations and requirements of different areas. This study mainly focuses on the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) regulations and investigates Aerit’s role, as a drone operator in Sweden, within this standardization framework. In particular, Specific Operations and Risk Assessment (SORA) process, developed by EASA, is illustrated. The process covers a comprehensive range of factors related to drone operations to assess and manage risks. In addition to the drone design standardization process, the study looks into drone flight control systems at component-level redundancy and at system-level redundancy with a scientific grounding of dependability. An investigation of what a voting system looks like is then conducted for implementing a redundant flight control architecture. Furthermore, results from Software-In-The-Loop (SITL) implementation in this study show that the performance differs not much for the two flight control architectures (component-level and system-level). Thus, the decision of whether to use one flight controller or redundant flight controllers depends on the specific requirements and priorities of the drone application as well as the level of pre-flight testing.