SBIR-STTR Award

An ejection system is designed to rescue the pilot or crew of a military aircraft in an emergency.The seat, parachute and survival pack are also ejected from the aircraft along with the crewmember.The pilot may be ejected at high altitudes and at very high air speeds.However, there is a problem with developing a realistic ejection event for ground based testing.There is a need for a robust and accurate sensor package to assess the system performance.Orbital Research will develop a new class of small sensors to assess the egress system performance. These sensors will accurately record time, space, and position information (TSPI) data be collected on the ejection seat and manikin to better than 0.5 microseconds , 1 foot and 1 degree. Our solution will be developing a system with the high performance of a tactical grade IMU while minimizing the size and cost.The proposed solution is completely standalone and will be integrated into the test manikin to quantifiably measure the pitch, roll, and yaw anglesof the seat/manikin combination at the beginning of the egress event and of the manikin as and after it is released from the seat .Time Space and Position Information (TSPI),Traumatic Brain Injury(TBI),tactical grade IMU,accelerometers and gyroscopes,dead reckoning,whole body or component injury criteria,epidemiology of injury,ejection criteria

Aircraft ejection systems are designed to safely eject the pilot and crewmembers along with their seat, parachute and survival pack. However, the egress event can become very chaotic which may cause injury to the ejected pilot in milliseconds. To better understand the egress system, ground based simulated testing is performed via sled tests in an attempt to realistically represent the ejection event. For this application, the Orbital Team proposes a new class of small sensor suites to accurately record time, space, and position information from the egress manikin and ejection seat during sled tests. The proposed sensor suites are capable of collecting the spatial and temporal sled test data to better than 0.5 microseconds, 1 foot and 1 degree. The proposed sensing solution is completely standalone which enables the integration of multiple units into both the egress manikin and seat. These sensor suites are able to quantifiably measure the time, position, pitch, roll, and yaw angles of the seat/manikin combination at the beginning of the sled test, though the egress event and to manikin hitting the ground. The results will be presented to the researchers shortly after the test event in a customer defined format.