7. Human Errors in UAV Takeoff and Landing: Theoretical Account and Practical Implications

The successful culmination of missions based on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) can be measured with two main parameters: (1) successful mission completion: all objectives of the mission (e.g., maneuvering and navigation, reconnaissance and targeting or search and rescue, and return) were accomplished and (2) safety: no damage to the vehicle and no fatalities or injuries to any human were sustained throughout the mission. Automation of the UAV's control and operations increasingly becomes a determining factor in successful mission completion and increased safety. However, in this day and age of automatically launched and retrieved swarms of UAVs, the human operator still has a critical role. Human-controlled UAVs will persist for a long time and human error is a factor that still needs addressing in the age of automation. Even a single person, who has flown radio-controlled model aircraft as a hobby since childhood, can still cause the crash of an expensive UAV in a matter of seconds. Moreover, there are aspects of human error in UAV control that can have important implications to the implementation of automation and to keeping the human operator in the control loop.