Relating Sensor Degradation to Vehicle Situational Awareness for Autonomous Air Vehicle Certification

Pilots use situational awareness (SA) to make appropriate aeronautical decisions. Autonomous vehicles will not have a human pilot (or operator) in the loop when off-nominal conditions present themselves, and will rely on sensors to build SA on their environment to make sound aeronautical decisions. As their sensors degrade, it is hypothesized that a point exists where the SA those decisions are based off will be inadequate for sound aeronautical decisions. It will be shown that this point can be identified through modeling and simulation of a simple sensor network to complete a task currently reserved for qualified pilots. This research highlights the process of determining an objective measure for the subjective end and relates it to a possible safety of flight certification for an autonomous system to perform tasks currently reserved for qualified pilots.