Autonomous Guidance for Unmanned Aircraft Operating in National Airspace Navy SBIR FY2008.1 Sol No.: Navy SBIR FY2008.1 Topic No.: N08-079 Topic Title: Autonomous Guidance for Unmanned Aircraft Operating in National Airspace Proposal No.: N081-079-1000 Firm: Data Research & Analysis Corp. 1555 King St. #300 Alexandria, Virginia 22314-2738 Contact: Jerry Mehlberg Phone: (703) 299-0700 Web Site: www.dracorp.com Abstract: This document proposes to develop, test, and demonstrate collision avoidance and autopilot guidance algorithms for small unmanned aircraft systems. This project will develop real-time, multithreaded algorithms that will process sensor inputs, manage priorities, plan aircraft trajectories, and generated autopilot inputs. The project will also involve an extensive modeling and simulation effort, in order to perform tests and demonstrations of the algorithms developed. The resulting simulation capability may also be useful for testing alternative algorithms, and for developing and refining system requirements and specifications. UAVs with autonomous capabilities are essentially flying robots. As robots, they need to gather information (sensory input) about the environment around them and make decisions about what they should be doing (controlling actuators or devices). Sensors and devices must be dealt with concurrently, otherwise devices can get starved and sensors ignored. The software design is patterned after the latest generation robotic software. To support testing and validation, a simulation testbed based on the USAF EAAGLES toolkit will be used. This will allow testing in a high-density environment. EAAGLES was built to support distributed simulation so that many EAAGLES-based applications can be executed simultaneously thereby generating many players without compromising performance. Benefits: Collision avoidance software for UAVs is an enabling technology that will facilitate the integration of UAVs into the national airspace system. This will spur the growth of UAV capabilities and utilization. Numerous civil and commercial applications will require routine access to the national airspace system. These include security, law enforcement, search and rescue, fire fighting, surveillance and mapping, oil and electrical utility surveillance, and news gathering. Return