Early Detection of Design Errors in the Life Cycle of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: A SysML Approach

Abstract

The widespread of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in various application domains has questioned the design methods used by UAV manufacturers. Migration from document centric approaches to Model-Based ones has stimulated research work on modeling languages and tools that reduce cost development and time to market. Among the various benefits one may expect from using a Model-Based System Engineering approach, the paper essentially considers a model as a reference for early detection of design errors in the life cycle of UAVs. The paper proposes designers to model the UAV in SysML and to use the free software TTool for safety analysis. TTool includes a SysML model editor, a model simulator and formal verification modules that rely safety analysis on mathematics rather than chance. The method associated with SysML and TTool is applied to a UAV in charge of taking pictures.