Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) cargo system: senior design capstone project

To respond to current and future consumer demands in air cargo delivery, an unmanned air vehicle (UAV) cargo system is proposed. It would provide a safe, automated air cargo system which could be operational and more cost effective than the existing system. The system could potentially operate twenty four hours a day, seven days a week and provide guaranteed one business day delivery service. For the UAV cargo system to be in full operation it is assumed that the operational ground infrastructure for airport-independent operations is in place, accurate, and reliable, and the data link communication between air traffic control (ATC) and the UAV are in place. The analysis approach consists of evaluating the operational cost of the system by performing a trade-off analysis to measure the feasibility of the UAV cargo system for a business case; simulating the landing and en-route portion of the alternative proposed in order to analyze the operational performance of the system and to provide the best solution to the problem; and analyzing the safety and reliability of the system by performing failure rate analysis of the redundancy systems.