During the data analysis phase of a CUAS T&E event questions such as these often arise:
- How many UAVs were in the air at this time?
- Which TSPI was on which aircraft?
- What aircraft did we lose in the river?
- Did the CUAS detect the UAV?
- Did the CUAS mitigate the UAV?
The telemetry and CUAS systems data will tell one story and the humans will provide a different perspective. Combining the human and data perspectives is an important part of the data validation process. However, like digital data collection, errors or lack of standards and consistency in human data collection may create more confusion than it eliminates. Thus it is very important pre-event to determine what data needs to be collected, implement and test the process, assign a responsible party to ensure that the process is implemented and executed, and verify that the collection occurred at the level expected. Finding out that this data is suspect post-event is too late – there is little opportunity to go back and collect it once everyone has left.
During the recent exercise we collected all this information manually and combined it later. Ultimately this worked but URSA is extending our platform to support real time human observations. This will minimize transcription errors, enable a more standardized data collection process, and make the data available in real time rather than days or weeks later.