1.
ARE YOU LIKELY TO BE HIT BY A DRONE?
AND KILLED …
OCTOBER, 2017
Anders la Cour-Harbo
Associate Professor
Manager of Drone Research Lab
DRONE RESEARCH LAB

2.
Aviation
Commercia
l
73
Offshore
9
Aerial work
20
Non-
commercial
94
Balloons
2
Gliders
26
RPAS
0
Source: EASA Annual Safety Review 2016
Average number of deaths in
aviation in Europe 2005-2015

3.
Drone target values
General aviation fatalities US & EURO:
Commercial aviation fatalities US & EURO:
Drones expected recommendation EURO:
10-5 fatalities per flight hour
10-7 fatalities per flight hour
10-6 fatalities per flight hour
Max 1 fatality
per
1.000.000 drone flight hours
for each single drone flight

4.
Example
Probability of fatality – made simple
Probability of impacting a person
Person density – area of person
Probability of fatal injury from impact
Speed – mass – angle – front area
Probability of fatality per flight hour
Preferably < 10-6
Probability of loss of control
Wing breaks, loss of power, autopilot haywire
Probability of crash
Ballistic – uncontrolled glide – fly away
1/100 h
20%
0.1%
50%
= 10-6

5.
BVLOS FastTrack

6.
Modeling risk of ground fatalities – example flight
Penguin C aircraft
Transport flight from
Kolding to Aalborg, 180 km

7.
Modeling risk of ground fatalities – example flight

8.
Modeling risk of ground fatalities – example flight
Low population density High population density

9.
Modeling risk of ground fatalities – descent types
Fly-away
Uncontrolled glide
Parachute descent
Ballistic descent

10.
Modeling risk of ground fatalities – descent types
Flyaway

11.
Modeling risk of ground fatalities – assumptions

12.
Modeling risk of ground fatalities – fatalities per flight hour

13.
Modeling risk of ground fatalities – results
ALL the gory details are presented in article:
[1] la Cour-Harbo. Quantifying ground impact fatality rate for small unmanned aircraft. Submitted to
Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems, 2017.
[2] la Cour-Harbo. Ground impact probability distribution for small unmanned aircraft in ballistic descent.
Submitted to Reliability Engineering and Safety Analysis, 2017.
[3] la Cour-Harbo, Quantifying risk of ground impact fatalities of power line inspection BVLOS flight with
small unmanned aircraft. IEEE Intl. Conference of Unmanned Aircraft Systems, Miami, 2017.

14.
ASSURE project
Human drone impact

15.
ASSURE project
Drone in jet engine

16.
Drone aircraft impact
Douglas Cairns, Montana State University, US
Ian Horsfall, Cranfield University, UK

17.
Midair collision probability
– coming in Jan 2018
𝑓 =
4𝑟𝑛𝑇𝑣
𝐺
𝑟
Frequency of “impact” (safety zones intersect)
when all are flying at same altitude
n Number of GA aircraft
T Fraction of time airborne (h/year)
v Speed of GA aircraft
G Size of region for which n applies
𝑓 =
4 ∙ 100 ∙ 1500 ∙
250
8760
∙ 50
43,100,000,000
∙ 3600 = 0.072
𝑣
Giving one impact per
14 flight hours.
[4] la Cour-Harbo, Bertrand, Schiøler.
Modelling probability of impact between
general aviation and small unmanned aircraft.
Working paper. Submission to Risk Analysis.

18.
SafeEye – IFD project
Overall principle of SafeEye
Supervise the flight and
automatically assist in emergencies.

19.
Regulation – Europe – 2019-ish

20.
Regulation – Europe – 2019-ish

21.
Regulation – Europe – 2019-ish
[5] la Cour-Harbo. The value of step-by-step
risk assessment. Working paper. Submission
to Risk Analysis 2018.

22.
DRONE RESEARCH LAB
ARE YOU LIKELY TO BE HIT BY A DRONE?
Anders la Cour-Harbo
alc@es.aau.dk