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Innovative Rotorcraft Control for Shipboard Operations

Award Information
Agency: Department of Defense
Branch: Navy
Contract: N68335-07-C-0310
Agency Tracking Number: N071-031-0775
Amount: $149,736.00
Phase: Phase I
Program: SBIR
Solicitation Topic Code: N07-031
Solicitation Number: 2007.1
Timeline
Solicitation Year: 2007
Award Year: 2007
Award Start Date (Proposal Award Date): 2007-04-23
Award End Date (Contract End Date): 2007-10-23
Small Business Information
1410 Sachem Place Suite 202
Charlottesville, VA 22901
United States
DUNS: 120839477
HUBZone Owned: No
Woman Owned: No
Socially and Economically Disadvantaged: No
Principal Investigator
 John Schierman
 Senior Research Scientist
 (434) 973-1215
 schierman@bainet.com
Business Contact
 Connie Hoover
Title: General Manager
Phone: (434) 973-1215
Email: barron@bainet.com
Research Institution
N/A
Abstract

An adaptive flight control concept is proposed to better compensate for disturbances on the rotorcraft due to ship airwake effects and the moving ship deck during helicopter or tiltrotor shipboard operations. The flight controller could ultimately be used on a fully autonomous system or in a pilot-assist mode on manned rotorcraft. A parameter identification algorithm and an on-line learning approach will be applied to estimate in real-time important effects of the ship airwake and ship motion. The system would identify both the statistical properties of the apparently random characteristics of the airwake as well as the re-peatable and deterministic disturbances of the airwake due to the ship’s geometry and motion. A flight controller will be designed that uses the information from the on-line learning algorithms to improve dis-turbance rejection properties of the aircraft. The system would provide enhanced feedback compensation to improve rejection of disturbances due to random airwake forces impinging on the vehicle, and feed-forward compensation to help compensate for deterministic airwake disturbances. A high-fidelity tilt-rotor UAV simulation will be further advanced and employed to demonstrate and evaluate the adaptive control system. Preliminary real-time piloted simulations will be the focus of the Phase I Option effort.

* Information listed above is at the time of submission. *

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