Читать книгу Introduction to UAV Systems - Mohammad H. Sadraey - Страница 11

This book is a welcome addition to the Aerospace Series, continuing the tradition of the Series in providing clear and practical advice to practitioners in the field of aerospace. This book will appeal to a wide readership and is an especially good introduction to the subject by extending the range of titles on the topic of unmanned air vehicles, and more importantly presenting a systems viewpoint of unmanned air systems. This is important as the range of vehicles currently available provides a diverse range of capabilities with differing structural designs, propulsions systems, payloads, ground systems, and launch/recovery mechanisms. It is difficult to see any rationalization or standardization of vehicles or support environment in the range of available solutions.

The book covers the history of unmanned flight and describes the range of solutions available world‐wide. It then addresses the key aspects of the subsystems such as structure, propulsion, navigation, sensor payloads, launch and recovery, and associated ground systems in a readable and precise manner, pulling them together as elements of a total integrated system. In this way it is complementary to other systems books in the Series.

It is important for engineers and designers to visualize the totality of a system in order to gain an understanding of all that is involved in designing new vehicles or in writing new requirements to arrive at a coherent design of vehicle and infrastructure. Even more important if the new vehicle needs to interact and inter‐operate with other vehicles or to operate from different facilities.

If unmanned air systems are going to become accepted in civilian airspace and in commercial applications then it is vital that a set of standards and design guidelines is in place to ensure consistency, to aid the certification process, and to provide a global infrastructure similar to that existing for today’s manned fleets. Without that understanding, certification of unmanned air vehicles to operate in civilian controlled airspace is going to be a long and arduous task.

This book sets the standard for a definitive work on the subject of unmanned air systems by providing a measure of consistency and a clear understanding of the topic.