The Canadian Vertical Lift Autonomy Demonstration Project – High Level Concepts for the Development of Autonomy

Through the development and flight testing of the Canadian Vertical Lift Autonomy Demonstration (CVLAD) Autonomous Flight System (AFS), the NRC has developed technical and operational insight into many high-level concepts of a full-scale supervised-autonomous helicopter, which are thought to be applicable to a wide variety of implementations and approaches. This paper presents two important concepts: "The Contract" and "Levels of Aggression", for which it is expected some aspect of implementation would be required in any supervised autonomous platform and in particular for platforms where the pilot supervising the autonomy remains on-board the aircraft (and thus the AFS provides a 'competent co-pilot' type functionality).