A Metamorphic Artificial Age Score Decision-Support Prototype for Flight-Log-Based Drone Propeller Health Monitoring

Abstract

Drone propeller faults can create safety and reliability risks when their effects are distributed across multiple flight-log channels rather than appearing as a single diagnostic signal. This paper proposes a Metamorphic Artificial Age Score (AAS) decision-support prototype for flight-log-based drone propeller health monitoring. Using selected historical real flight logs from the 2024 DronePropA public dataset, the framework computes six health-related indicators from raw MATLAB matrices: trajectory tracking error, attitude instability, thrust-command burden, motor-command imbalance, ESC-command instability, and battery-level stress. These indicators are normalized relative to a healthy baseline and evaluated through candidate scoring policies, metamorphic adequacy relations, and a redundancy-adjusted AAS formulation. In this context, AAS is used as a structural policy-adequacy and burden measure rather than as a chronological age measure. A controlled retrospective evaluation was performed using one healthy baseline and three defective propeller cases under the same speed profile and trajectory. The healthy case was assigned to routine monitoring. The Severity 1 case was dominated by ESC-command instability and assigned to maintenance review. The Severity 2 case reached maximum motor-command and ESC-command burden, while the Severity 3 case reached maximum trajectory tracking error; both triggered mandatory inspection. The results show that propeller fault effects may appear through different operational channels, supporting the need for a multi-indicator decision-support layer for post-flight maintenance prioritization and autonomous-system oversight.