SBIR-STTR Award

Autonomous emplacement of sensors and unmanned ground vehicles by airdrop requires that the payload stay upright after impact and that the parachute, container, and any impact attenuation is derigged from the payload automatically after landing. The 5-50 lb payload scale of sensors and small unmanned ground vehicles offers tremendous freedom for rapid innovation in airdrop technology. The design space of feasible concepts which would satisfy all of the requirements for this project is large, so the key to approaching this problem is a thorough design space exploration. The engineering team at Earthly Dynamics Corporation (EDC) will leverage their extensive experience in developing novel and robust airdrop sensing and actuation technologies to perform a broad concept analysis study to produce a unique set of designs with the best combination of performance and cost. Promising designs will be down-selected through an analysis of alternatives performed in collaboration with the stakeholders. EDC’s mechanical and electrical design capabilities will be used to develop preliminary designs, and EDC’s specialized multibody dynamic impact simulation tools will be used to perform virtual landing studies. EDC’s extensive experience prototyping and airdropping innovative hardware will be employed in the fabrication and drop testing of functional, scale prototype systems.

The goal of the Phase II effort is to develop a full-scale sensor emplacement system prototype capable of meeting all of the Army’s mission requirements and demonstrate the ability of this system to perform in actual full-scale airdrop testing. There are three key tasks associated with the sensor emplacement mission: 1) Release Parachute, 2) Ensure correct payload orientation, and 3) De-rig payload. Each aspect of the mission is extremely challenging, and furthermore, each aspect of the mission must be completed reliably in the harsh conditions associated with aerial cargo delivery. EDC’s approach to solving this challenging problem is based on repeated iterations between intelligent system design, computer simulation, and experimental testing. The Phase II effort will be split into two separate development cycles. The first development cycle is focused on the design optimization, fabrication, and experimental testing of the best three concepts identified at the end of the Phase I effort. The performance of each of the three concepts will then be evaluated in detail and the best concept will be selected. The second development cycle will then cover another round of design optimization, fabrication, and experimental testing. The second development cycle will focus on optimization of the final concept with a particular emphasis on robustness and reliability. The second development cycle will conclude with an airdrop demonstration of the final prototype system. The goal is that the final prototype system demonstrated in Phase II has a clear transition strategy to a fieldable Army capability that will be pursued during a follow-on Phase III effort. The technical objectives of the Phase II effort are designed to provide the supporting framework for the prototype development cycles, execute the initial competitive prototype development and testing, down-select a final concept, perform another cycle of design, optimization, and testing on the final concept, and finally lay the groundwork for the Phase III effort. The objectives of the Phase II effort are: 1) detailed definition of requirements, 2) continued development of the dynamic landing simulation, 3) establishing the apparatus for experimental testing, 4) development and testing of prototypes most promising concepts from Phase I, 5) selection of the final concept, 6) optimization and testing of the final concept, and 7) planning for phase III.