Drone Ground Impact Footprints with Importance Sampling: Estimation and Sensitivity Analysis

Abstract

This paper addresses the estimation of accurate extreme ground impact footprints and probabilistic maps due to a total loss of control of fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles after a main engine failure. In this paper, we focus on the ground impact footprints that contains 95%, 99% and 99.9% of the drone impacts. These regions are defined here with density minimum volume sets and may be estimated by Monte Carlo methods. As Monte Carlo approaches lead to an underestimation of extreme ground impact footprints, we consider in this article multiple importance sampling to evaluate them. Then, we perform a reliability oriented sensitivity analysis, to estimate the most influential uncertain parameters on the ground impact position. We show the results of these estimations on a realistic drone flight scenario.