Safe Autonomous Flight Environment (SAFE50) for the Notional Last '50 ft' of Operation of '55 lb' Class of UAS

Our CIF project is built from an inter-disciplinary foundation and provides a leap beyond state of practice using feasibility assessment in realistic flight environments of high risk technologies from robotic hardware, computational fluid dynamics (CFD), and innovative real-time algorithms. A key part of our study involves deliberately selected feasibility questions and validation of these targeted approaches by flying in realistic environments. The questions are: (1) Can on-board sensors and compact CFD models provide sufficiently accurate and robust wind estimates? (2) How well can dynamic obstacles be characterized using combinations of cameras and light detection and ranging (LIDARs) in real-time? (3) Is on-board information fusion for real-time decision-making and safe trajectory generation and management sufficiently robust? Deliverables: Three Validated Technologies, set of open source software, models, and knowledge documents.

May enable safe autonomous unmanned aerial system (UAS) flight. Potential customers and Applications: NASA Aeronautics Mission Directorate (ARMD), Department of Homeland Security, manufacturers of drones, rule making bodies such as Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), etc. Follow-on work: Following validation, ARMD UAS traffic management (UTM) project will invest in a UTM 4 build that will be influenced by SAFE50 technologies.

This is early/mid-stage (TRL 4) — the most realistic path in is NASA SBIR/STTR, which funds small businesses and research institutions to develop technology aligned with NASA's needs (equity-free, phased funding). Check whether a current SBIR/STTR solicitation topic overlaps with this project's technology area, or contact the project directly (above) to ask.

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