Award honours robotics engineer’s soaring achievements
A QUT engineer who has made a significant contribution to the burgeoning drone industry has been recognised with the 2022 Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE) Batterham Medal.
First published 27 October 2022
Associate Professor Aaron McFadyen, from QUT’s School of Electrical Engineering & Robotics, was presented with the prestigious award at a gala event, organised by the Academy, in Sydney on Wednesday October 26.
The Batterham Medal is awarded to an engineer - in industry or academia - who has made a significant contribution to any form of engineering and recognises a body of work over five years.
The recipient needs to have engineered something that has radically changed the way we do things in this country, and Professor McFadyen has done just that.
His work has spanned uncrewed drone traffic management systems involving multi-agent control and network design; air traffic modelling techniques using machine learning and optimisation; and quantitative risk analysis using applied statistics and data analytics.
With drones and the aviation industry generally, the main game is airspace management and safety-first operations in the air.
As aviation technology evolves, it’s vital that crewed and uncrewed flights operate safely together in Australian airspace. The position, altitude, trajectory and flight path of each plane, helicopter, and drone in the sky needs to be acutely managed and monitored in a challenging and complex system that accounts for the current and future behaviour.
Dr McFadyen’s ground-breaking work began with an idea about how to manage uncrewed (drone) traffic and is now key to integrating drones at busy airports.
His signature contribution is that he created software - through several years of developing and honing a complex algorithm - that creates maps that are now in trial with CASA (Civil Aviation Safety Authority) and Airservices Australia within 3nm (nautical miles) of controlled aerodromes in Australia to give automated approval and real time guidance on an array of factors to drone operators.
His world-beating research was developed with Airservices Australia and now underpins Australia’s Automated Airspace Authorisations system for uncrewed aircraft (drones) - leaving a lasting impact on the sector.
“We helped automate what was a convoluted, costly and cumbersome permission and approval system that drone operators previously had to contend with,” Dr McFadyen said.
“It was a long, onerous process just to get an approval to fly, which can potentially promote bad behaviour where an operator may think ‘I'll just take off and not tell the regulator’.
“Previously for CASA it was a sort of a blanket rule, a certain distance from an airport, no flying,” he said.
Now the operators approach CASA, or third-party services like Brisbane-based company Fly Freely, to get an automated approval where possible. Using such digital interfaces and moving away from voice communications between pilot and controller to share information is a key innovation.
“We initially trialled the system at three airports with much success, and the feedback from all parties was incredibly positive,” Professor McFadyen said.
“We are looking into how we can add the remaining 26 controlled aerodromes in Australia but also ways to update the digital maps in the background - to make them even more automated, if you like, so it’s something that runs and is monitored, and no-one need touch. It is self-servicing.
“Allowing the process to be run and be managed in real-time by someone who does not have an in-depth understanding of all the complex maths behind it.”
The software creates an easily viewed map that renders airspace into colour-coded hexagonal fly zones depicting safe drone operating altitudes used in the automated approval system.
Professor McFadyen said the Automated Airspace Authorisations system was probably one of the most advanced tech in this space, in the world.
“The airspace management system LAANC that is used in the United States is still very manual regarding they maps they use, so we’d argue we are ahead _ which is pretty cool,” he said.
“The award no doubt recognises the ability to work with industry to achieve this result, take an idea, test it, work it, collaborate with the regulators and their data, trial it, and move to the next phase.”
As a child Professor McFadyen was fascinated with aeronautics. He got his private pilot’s licence in his 20s while studying for his Bachelor of Engineering in Aerospace Avionics at QUT, from which he graduated with First Class Honours.
Robotics underpins a drone’s effective operation - given that a drone is essentially a small robot that can fly - and over the years, as a robotics engineer, Professor McFadyen has worked on various aspects of how drones operate; see the world; manoeuvre; respond; navigate and avoid collisions.
He also spent time early in his career working on building and operating flight simulators - for Emirates Airline in Dubai - and learnt to fly a variety of aircraft but wasn’t interested in becoming a commercial pilot, aerobatics was more his style, but ultimately it was his interest in the engineering side of aerospace that won out.
But there are some aspects of his recent airspace management research that he would not have noticed, if not for his practical experience in aviation. Understanding aircraft separation from a pilot view, regulatory perspective, and a mathematics side has been really important.
“When a pilot is reporting their location or a surveillance system reports their position, how confident are you they are actually there? When did we receive and record that information and how accurate are the measurements?”
Being able to answer such questions and many others like this, is why he believes we are a little ahead of the game in that area.
Professor Robin Batterham AO FREng FAA FTSE is a renowned chemical engineer who became Chief Scientist of Australia in 1999. He was President of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering from 2007 to 2012.
The Batterham Medal is funded by the Group of Eight Deans of Engineering and Associates and administered by the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering.
Professor Leonie Barner has been awarded the prestigious Royal Australian Chemical Institute (RACI) Chemical Service Award recognising her substantial contributions to the field of chemistry and enduring commitment to advancing the profession especially with regards to sustainability.
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