Kick-off for project SAVEMUV

Professor Dr Nico Hochgeschwender and his international team are investigating the safe cooperation of drones that are used in teams to inspect aircraft safety.

Project SAVEMUV (Safe Airframe Inspection using Multiple UAVs) is funded by the international AAIP programme. Partners are the University of Luxembourg, Cargolux, DAC (Luxembourg admissions authority), the University of York (UK) and Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences.

During the 18-month duration of the project, the research team with Prof. Dr. Nico Hochgeschwender from Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences is investigating how teams of autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for the inspection of aircraft can be developed and tested so that they do not cause any damage.

The challenge:  The cooperation of drones in safety-critical inspection tasks is subject to certain susceptibilities to failure. These can be triggered by uncertainties and risks related to the operational environment, individual UAV failures, a disparate global perspective between teams, interference and/or disputes due to limited physical space and unreliable communication. 

SAFEMUV will provide a process for systematic robustness assessment of UAV teams, supported by methods for specifying, generating and testing cooperative inspection scenarios, and will demonstrate the step-by-step transition from simulation to laboratory and real-world operations. In addition, a demonstrator will be developed that realizes this process in a simulated environment, an indoor flight arena and an outdoor space at Luxembourg Airport.