MuSICA, Daidalus, ACAS Xu, MIDCAS, ODREA… there are multiple projects building a Detect and Avoid (DAA) system, yet it is not possible to compare they performances in different operational conditions. Though evaluating a whole DAA system may appear as a daunting task, splitting the system in two: a Collision Avoidance (CA) and Remain Well Clear (RWC) functions allows simpler evaluations for cases where only one of these is needed.
As a matter of fact, the RPAS Chair is proposing to extend a current SESAR2020 project to create a much needed open Benchmark for Collision Avoidance Systems: BCAS (Bécasse, in French, like the bird). The goal is to extend the current work, performed in the SESAR2020 PJ11-A2 project on evaluating ACAS Xu with fast time simulations, to evaluate other collision avoidance algorithms.
Now the difficult part is to choose carefully the scope of the simulator: which airspaces, which types of operations, which types of RPAS, which evaluation metrics ? In order to answer these questions, a researcher from the Chair presented the BCAS project to the JARUS Work Group 4 (Detect & Avoid) and 6 (Safety & Risk Management) joint meeting. It allowed gathering valuable informations about ongoing projects in similar topics, obstacles to overcome, and how to reach a trustworthy benchmark.
The light shed by the JARUS members on this project allowed coming one step closer to the definition of what BCAS needs to do.
The presentation can be found here.