SBIR-STTR Award

In order to be truly versatile, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Systems must be usable to individuals who's training is more focused on the requirements of a given mission or on the usability of the payload, rather than on the aviation of the air vehicle. This suggests that flight control systems must respond to higher level, more intuitive remote commands such as "go left", "go right", "climb", or "dive". Modern embedded guidance and control processing methods such as those used for autonomously guided cruise missiles or advanced military aircraft demonstrate that low-level stick-and-rudder commands can be eliminated as a requirement on the remote operator. In addition to a more intuitive command-response autopilot, Geneva Aerospace has developed a design which allows the integration of intuitive "mission-level" remote commands into the guidance system, significantly reducing the work-load on the operator as it pertains to the aviation of the UAV. The guidance system is evaluated on the Freewing Tilt-Body airframe, which provides unique inherent acamera stabilization and "Extremely" Short Take-off and Landing properties. The integrated guidance design and systems engineering approach proposed provides a modular core structure that can easily be upgraded and can grow with increasing technology.

Keywords:
Gps Aided Navigation Telepresence Mixed Reality Virtual Reality Unmanned Arial Vehicle Ground Statio

Truly effective UAV systems must be usable to individuals who's training is focused on the requirements of a given mission or the usability of the payload, rather than on the aviation of the vehicle. Geneva's Phase I research successfully demonstrated that our innovative integrated variable autonomy UAV flight control system design enables a diverse range of users to operate UAV's effectively. Furthermore, we have demonstrated that our system eliminates the requirement for UAVs to be controlled by highly trained, rated pilots. Northrop Grumman and the Joint STARS program have identified our variable autonomy control design as the UAV control mechanism of choice for the Joint STARS aircraft. During the proposed Phase II effort, Geneva will work with Northrop Grumman, Systems Interface Software, and Freewing Aerial Robotics with an objective of integrating our system into the Joint STARS MTR workstation and the Freewing Scorpion 100-50 UAV and conducting a flight test demonstration. The proposed effort will demonstrate the benefits of the variable autonomy flight control system design with dimplified manual control modes, demonstrate the compatibility of such a system with the military's emerging C'I architecture, and demonstrate the synergism between Joint STARS and UAVs using the simplified UAV flight control technology.

Keywords:
Autopilots Command & Control Flight Control System Guidance & Control Mission Management Operator De