Autonomous flight and remote site landing guidance research for helicopters

Automated low-altitude flight and landing in remote areas within a civilian environment are investigated, where initial cost, ongoing maintenance costs, and system productivity are important considerations. An approach has been taken which has: (1) utilized those technologies developed for military applications which are directly transferable to a civilian mission; (2) exploited and developed technology areas where new methods or concepts are required; and (3) undertaken research with the potential to lead to innovative methods or concepts required to achieve a manual and fully automatic remote area low-altitude and landing capability. The project has resulted in a definition of system operational concept that includes a sensor subsystem, a sensor fusion/feature extraction capability, and a guidance and control law concept. These subsystem concepts have been developed to sufficient depth to enable further exploration within the NASA simulation environment, and to support programs leading to the flight test

Predicting Marine Traffic in the Ice-Covered Baltic Sea

Icebreaking activity and seasonal ice propose challenges for marine traffic prediction in the Baltic Sea. Traffic prediction is a vital part in the planning of icebreaking activities, but it remains largely as a manual task. The aim of this thesis is to examine factors influencing marine traffic modelling in ice-covered waters and propose a novel A*-based method for modelling traffic in ice. The current state of the marine traffic modelling and factors affecting vessel movement are concluded by examining the literature and historical vessel tracks. The field of traffic modelling research is growing rapidly. Currently the biggest challenges are evaluation of results and the lack of publicly available datasets. Moreover, the current approaches to model vessel movement in ice are promising but fail to capture how icebreaking activity influences vessel routes. The proposed model consists of sea, maneuverability, route and speed modelling. The model uses historical AIS data, topography of the sea, vessel type and dirways as main data inputs. The model is trained with summer tracks and dirways are used for modelling the ice channels kept open by icebreakers. The accuracy of the model is evaluated by examining route, speed, traffic and ETA (estimated time of arrival) prediction results separately. Moreover, the area between the actual and predicted route is introduced as an accuracy measure for route prediction. The model shows that winter route prediction can be improved by incorporating dirways to the modelling. However, the use of dirways did not affect the speed, traffic or ETA prediction accuracy. Finally, the datasets and source code used in this thesis are published online

Predicting Marine Traffic in the Ice-Covered Baltic Sea

Icebreaking activity and seasonal ice propose challenges for marine traffic prediction in the Baltic Sea. Traffic prediction is a vital part in the planning of icebreaking activities, but it remains largely as a manual task. The aim of this thesis is to examine factors influencing marine traffic modelling in ice-covered waters and propose a novel A*-based method for modelling traffic in ice. The current state of the marine traffic modelling and factors affecting vessel movement are concluded by examining the literature and historical vessel tracks. The field of traffic modelling research is growing rapidly. Currently the biggest challenges are evaluation of results and the lack of publicly available datasets. Moreover, the current approaches to model vessel movement in ice are promising but fail to capture how icebreaking activity influences vessel routes. The proposed model consists of sea, maneuverability, route and speed modelling. The model uses historical AIS data, topography of the sea, vessel type and dirways as main data inputs. The model is trained with summer tracks and dirways are used for modelling the ice channels kept open by icebreakers. The accuracy of the model is evaluated by examining route, speed, traffic and ETA (estimated time of arrival) prediction results separately. Moreover, the area between the actual and predicted route is introduced as an accuracy measure for route prediction. The model shows that winter route prediction can be improved by incorporating dirways to the modelling. However, the use of dirways did not affect the speed, traffic or ETA prediction accuracy. Finally, the datasets and source code used in this thesis are published online

Roving vehicle motion control Final report

Roving vehicle motion control for unmanned planetary and lunar exploratio

A Review on UAV Wireless Charging: Fundamentals, Applications, Charging Techniques and Standards

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are becoming increasingly popular for applications such as inspections, delivery, agriculture, surveillance, and many more. It is estimated that, by 2040, UAVs/drones will become a mainstream delivery channel to satisfy the growing demand for parcel delivery. Though the UAVs are gaining interest in civil applications, the future of UAV charging is facing a set of vital concerns and open research challenges. Considering the case of parcel delivery, handling countless drones and their charging will become complex and laborious. The need for non-contact based multi-device charging techniques will be crucial in saving time and human resources. To efficiently address this issue, Wireless Power Transmission (WPT) for UAVs is a promising technology for multi-drone charging and autonomous handling of multiple devices. In the literature of the past five years, limited surveys were conducted for wireless UAV charging. Moreover, vital problems such as coil weight constraints, comparison between existing charging techniques, shielding methods and many other key issues are not addressed. This motivates the author in conducting this review for addressing the crucial aspects of wireless UAV charging. Furthermore, this review provides a comprehensive comparative study on wireless charging's technical aspects conducted by prominent research laboratories, universities, and industries. The paper also discusses UAVs' history, UAVs structure, categories of UAVs, mathematical formulation of coil and WPT standards for safer operation.publishedVersio

Fourth High Alpha Conference, volume 2

The goal of the Fourth High Alpha Conference, held at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center on July 12-14, 1994, was to focus on the flight validation of high angle of attack technologies and provide an in-depth review of the latest high angle of attack activities. Areas that were covered include high angle of attack aerodynamics, propulsion and inlet dynamics, thrust vectoring, control laws and handling qualities, and tactical utility

Concept exploration for a future frigate/destroyer size warship platform

The purpose of this thesis is to make a clean sheet of paper approach to develop a platform for a future frigate/destroyer size warship based on the operational requirements in the context of future crisis management and constrained resources. The envisioned timeframe is the beginning of the next decade, i.e. 2010+. Basic operational requirements regarding the bare warship platform will be weighted and discussed. The study is concentrating on the hull and propulsion configuration to support the derived operational needs. All weapons and control systems will be handled as interchangeable modules, hence only spaces and interfaces will be discussed in this thesis. Special emphasis is given to Total Ownership Costs and the risk from incorporating not yet introduced technologies. In addition to the classical monohull approach, Catamaran, Trimaran, SWATH and the O'Neill hull form configurations will be investigated as well. In comparison to the Combined Diesel and Gas Turbine (CODAG) and Combined Diesel or Gas Turbine (CODOG) propulsion Diesel Electric, Gas Turbine Electric and possible combinations of these propulsion concepts will be evaluated.http://archive.org/details/conceptexplorati109452662German Navy autho

Evaluation of High Density Air Traffic Operations with Automation for Separation Assurance, Weather Avoidance and Schedule Conformance

In this paper we discuss the development and evaluation of our prototype technologies and procedures for far-term air traffic control operations with automation for separation assurance, weather avoidance and schedule conformance. Controller-in-the-loop simulations in the Airspace Operations Laboratory at the NASA Ames Research Center in 2010 have shown very promising results. We found the operations to provide high airspace throughput, excellent efficiency and schedule conformance. The simulation also highlighted areas for improvements: Short-term conflict situations sometimes resulted in separation violations, particularly for transitioning aircraft in complex traffic flows. The combination of heavy metering and growing weather resulted in an increased number of aircraft penetrating convective weather cells. To address these shortcomings technologies and procedures have been improved and the operations are being re-evaluated with the same scenarios. In this paper we will first describe the concept and technologies for automating separation assurance, weather avoidance, and schedule conformance. Second, the results from the 2010 simulation will be reviewed. We report human-systems integration aspects, safety and efficiency results as well as airspace throughput, workload, and operational acceptability. Next, improvements will be discussed that were made to address identified shortcomings. We conclude that, with further refinements, air traffic control operations with ground-based automated separation assurance can routinely provide currently unachievable levels of traffic throughput in the en route airspace

Aeronautical engineering: A continuing bibliography with indexes (supplement 202)

This bibliography lists 447 reports, articles and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in June 1986

Aeronautical Engineering. A continuing bibliography with indexes, supplement 135, May 1981

This bibliography lists 536 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in April 1981