Safe Airframe Inspection using Multiple UAVs (SAFEMUV)

Assuring the safety of teams of autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that carry out a safety-critical inspection task collaboratively is very challenging due to uncertainties and risks associated with the operating environment, individual UAV failures, inconsistent global perspective between team, interference and/or contention because of limited physical space, and unreliable communication. In SAFEMUV, we will extend, adapt, and integrate our recent research and the latest advances from operational risk assessment for UAVs, managing variability in robotic systems through feature modelling, and automated synthesis of models and testing campaigns for assessing system robustness. In a nutshell, SAFEMUV will deliver a process for systematic robustness assessment of UAV teams underpinned by methods for the specification, generation and testing of collaborative inspection scenarios, enabling the progressive transition from simulation to lab-based operations and to real-world operations; and a demonstrator that realises this process using an a simulated environment, an indoor flight arena and an outdoor space at Luxembourg Airport.