Automating UAV Flight Readiness Approval using Goal-Directed Answer Set Programming

TL;DR

This paper introduces a goal-directed Answer Set Programming approach to automate UAV flight compliance verification with AMA safety rules, providing explanations and minimal condition sets for safe operation.

Contribution

It is the first application of ASP in AMA UAV compliance, integrating s(CASP) with a user interface and REST service for automated, explainable safety checks.

Findings

Automated compliance checks with human-readable explanations.

Implementation of minimal condition algorithm for passing regulations.

Deployment of a RESTful ASP reasoning service.

Abstract

We present a novel application of Goal-Directed Answer Set Programming that digitizes the model aircraft operator's compliance verification against the Academy of Model Aircrafts (AMA) safety code. The AMA safety code regulates how AMA flyers operate Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for limited recreational purposes. Flying drones and their operators are subject to various rules before and after the operation of the aircraft to ensure safe flights. In this paper, we leverage Answer Set Programming to encode the AMA safety code and automate compliance checks. To check compliance, we use the s(CASP) which is a goal-directed ASP engine. By using s(CASP) the operators can easily check for violations and obtain a justification tree explaining the cause of the violations in human-readable natural language. Further, we implement an algorithm to help the operators obtain the minimal set of conditions that need to be satisfied in order to pass the compliance check. We develop a front-end questionnaire interface that accepts various conditions and use the backend s(CASP) engine to evaluate whether the conditions adhere to the regulations. We also leverage s(CASP) implemented in SWI-Prolog, where SWI-Prolog exposes the reasoning capabilities of s(CASP) as a REST service. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first application of ASP in the AMA and Avionics Compliance and Certification space.