Mon, Oct 15, 2012
Will Enable VTOL Aircraft To Operate Largely Unsupervised
The Office of Naval Research has awarded a $13.5 million contract to an industry team led by Lockheed Martin to explore highly advanced autonomous technologies aboard an unmanned vertical take-off and landing aircraft. Under the contract, Lockheed Martin and a team of industry, government, and academic partners will develop a technology that will enable aircraft to operate under supervisory control. A human operator will interact with the system at a high level while low level control is left to the automation.
The resulting technology will have the potential to improve the utility and effectiveness of current unmanned vertical take-off and landing aircraft, as well as offer pilots supplemental decision aids on legacy manned platforms. "This contract provides our team the opportunity to demonstrate how far we can expand the technology envelope," said Roger Il Grande, director of Airborne Systems for Lockheed Martin's Mission Systems & Sensors business. "Some of our cutting edge technology has already been demonstrated on K-MAX for the Army's Autonomous Technologies for Unmanned Air System program, and is now deployed with the Marine Corps on the aircraft in Afghanistan."
During this first, 18-month phase of the five-year effort, the team will demonstrate the capabilities of its Open-Architecture Planning and Trajectory Intelligence for Managing Unmanned Systems (OPTIMUS) architecture. OPTIMUS is designed to be platform-agnostic, drawing from Lockheed Martin's experience with the unmanned K-MAX cargo resupply program and the combined teams' expertise in the fields of sensing, autonomy and human-machine interaction.
More News
Aviation Governance Secured...At Least For a While The National Business Aviation Association similarly applauded the passage of the FAA's recent reauthorization, contentedly recou>[...]
Emphasis On Growing The Future of Aviation Through Concentration on 'AFFORDABLE FLYERS' It's been a number of years since the Latest Edition of Jim Campbell's HUGE SportPlane Resou>[...]
Amazilia Aerospace GmbH, Develops Digital Flight Control, Flight Guidance And Vehicle Management Systems Textron eAviation has acquired substantially all the assets of Amazilia Aer>[...]
Honeywell's Primus Brings New Tools and Niceties for Hawker Operators Hawker 4000 business jet operators have a new installation on the table, now that the FAA has granted an STC f>[...]
Company Celebrates Niche-but-Important Advancement in Industry Standards Echodyne has announced full integration of its proprietary 'EchoFlight' radar into the e American Aerospace>[...]