AR-Based Visual Aids for sUAS Operations in Security Sensitive Areas

The use of UAVs has recently been proposed for services in civil airports and other sensitive areas. Besides specific regulations from authorities, the situation awareness of the UAV operator is a key aspect for a safe coexistence between manned and unmanned traffic. The operator must be provided in real-time with contextually relevant information, in order to take the proper actions promptly based on the notified contingency. Augmented reality can be adopted to superimpose such additional information on the real-world scene. After the definition of an architecture for the integration of drone operations in the airspace, in this paper the interface and the layout of an augmented reality application for the situation awareness of the pilot are designed and discussed.