Robust Autonomous Maneuvering of Unmanned Air Systems in Challenging Environmental/Weather Conditions for Safety, Mission Effectiveness, and Endurance

The objective of this proposal is to develop and demonstrate methods of autonomous guidance and flight control that will permit safer and more effective operation of unmanned air systems under challenging weather conditions, and to exploit to the extent possible utilization of winds and other environmental conditions to increase mission effectiveness. Atair Aerospace has over the past 5 years developed novel and low cost approaches to maintaining stable and accurate trajectory control for guided parafoils operating under adverse wind conditions. Georgia Tech has for many years conducted leading edge research and experimentation in the area of adaptive guidance and adaptive flight control of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). This proposal will combine these areas of expertise to address the Navy problem as described in the subject solicitation. Phase-I will be primarily a simulation effort which will have a three-fold purpose. The first will be to exploit the methods developed at Atair for operating guided parafoils under high wind conditions, but for fixed wing UAV applications. The second will be to incorporate methods of adaptive flight control and energy management to optimize the trajectories of UAVs so as to increase their mission effectiveness, and the third will be to demonstrate these methods at Georgia Tech in a hardware-in-the-loop environment as a precursor to flight testing under a Phase-II effort.