Enhancing UAV Traffic Awareness: A Human-in-the-Loop Evaluation of a Camera-View-Based Traffic Display

The increased use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has raised concerns about potential conflicts with manned aviation. In recent years, several mid-air collisions between UAVs and general aviation aircraft have occurred. This issue is particularly relevant for beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operations, where the UAV pilot cannot visually monitor the surrounding airspace. BVLOS operations in low-level airspace are planned for several commercial UAV applications and require solutions to avoid conflicts with manned aviation. Studies have evaluated the use of traffic displays for larger UAVs, mainly in a military context, which operate in higher controlled airspace. However, no study has been conducted for low-level UAV missions with smaller civil UAVs. This work first shows a newly developed integrated traffic display design based on the transmitted camera-view of the UAV, which provides conflict information and avoidance maneuver guidance. This design is then compared to a baseline and an external 2D traffic display in a human-in-the-loop evaluation. The baseline condition provides a camera view of the UAV along with a moving map but no traffic information (representing current practices). The external 2D traffic display is shown on a second monitor that provides similar traffic information as the integrated camera-view traffic display. During the evaluation, participants are tasked to control a fixed-wing UAV on two UAV BVLOS mission types (surveillance and inspection) that involve encountering traffic. In some cases, an avoidance maneuver is required to avoid conflicts. The results indicate that the number of separation losses is significantly higher when using the baseline display as opposed to using either traffic display. In the baseline condition, some losses of separation resulted in near mid-air collisions (NMAC) with other traffic, indicating insufficient traffic awareness to safely conduct BVLOS flight missions. In contrast, no NMAC occurred with either traffic display. Subjectively, participants rated the integrated camera-view display best. The study’s insights demonstrate the need to provide UAV pilots with real-time traffic information. Integrating this information into the camera-view could be a potential solution for safely integrating UAVs into the current airspace system.