Globally the news media, popular culture and private citizens are sensationalizing “drones.” The term “drone” alone implies unmanned and autonomous. The reader will note that the editors of this book went to great lengths to deemphasize the term drone in favor of the more accurate term, Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS). RPAS represent a system of systems that rely on human inputs, interactions and operations. RPAS have also been referred to as Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAV) and Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA). We chose the RPAS terminology to emphasize that these aircraft exist within a system, an incredibly complex system of systems. Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems: A Human Systems Integration Perspective sets forth to fuse the practices of Human Systems Integration (HSI) with the complexity of RPAS.

For at least a decade, the human factors of RPAS has been the continued focus of a community of scientists, engineers and practitioners. Their efforts have been highlighted in various workshops, conferences and books and range from the design of effective ground control stations to crew coordination, spatial disorientation, supervisory control of multiple vehicles, soda straw views of camera feed, and training and selection. Much progress has been made, but this progress has given way to a different, more complex set of new HSI problems. For example, current pressing issues include the integration of RPAS into the national airspace, training and certification of civilian pilots, and the exploitation of sensor data from these platforms and concomitant privacy concerns. We explore these issues in detail in this book.

Many people confuse the discipline of Human Factors with HSI. HSI is more than Human Factors; it is human-centered systems engineering. Human Factors are typically narrow in scope and the methods within the discipline are best suited for smaller systems. HSI encompasses multiple domains. It provides a framework in which human capabilities and limitations across various dimensions are considered in the context of a dynamic system of people, technology, environment, tasks, and other systems with the ultimate goal of achieving system resilience and adaptation, approaching joint optimization. The human dimensions include human factors, manpower, training, personnel, safety, survivability, and habitability.

HSI also considers large multi-layered sociotechnical systems which is more than just the RPAS as an air vehicle, but includes the ground control station and crew, the related systems for maintenance, take-off and landing, training, and all embedded in a larger organizational structure such as the Department of Defense or Federal Aviation Administration. HSI considers simultaneous constraints and interoperability of all layers of the system and complex interactions. When system development does not consider the larger context even though development of a local component may be optimized, the larger system is poised for failure. For instance, an interface to support control of an RPAS should not be designed without consideration of the systems to support communications of its position and sensor information. The difficulty is that this kind of systems thinking requires teams of multidisciplinary individuals working together toward a solution.

The book highlights the importance of the systems approach. We offer that such considerations of tradeoffs, interactions within the system, unintended consequences, emergent behaviors of complex systems, systems embedded in context, and the reduction of stovepipes are keys to successful system development and operation. A systems approach requires personnel from a variety of fields to collaborate and communicate to accomplish a common goal – a fully integrated system.

The book also provides a baseline definition for RPAS framed by the tenets of HSI. The editors strived to identify and collaborate with those most skilled in both the fields of RPAS and HSI. The authors of the chapters have varied backgrounds and experience to include military and civilian RPAS operators, industry professionals, governmental agency subject matter experts, and professionals from academia. Our hope is that with the vast perspectives covered in the text we will be able to shed some light on the intricacies of the HSI issues within RPAS.

The chapters in this book are inter-related and the order of the chapters is deliberate. We strongly recommend starting with Chapter 1 as it sets the terms of reference and the baseline for the entire book and provides important operational definitions that will be referred to throughout the text. The compilation of this book was a true collaborative effort across multiple disciplines. The editors would like to express our sincere gratitude to the authors who participated in developing this manuscript. Each and every single author spent countless hours collaborating within and across the chapter teams. These experts in their respective fields were motivated to provide a common operating picture to improve the HSI components of RPAS today and moving forward.

We would also like to thank the following individuals for their contributions in preparing the manuscript: Amanda Avenoso, Gary Rankin, Christine Covas-Smith, JoAnn Hamilton, Rachel Vickhouse and Katherine Wong at Wiley, and Garima Singh from Thomson Digital, were all helpful and responsive as we finalized this edition.