Integrated Collision Avoidance Enhanced GN&C System for Smart Air Vehicles, Phase I

The objective of this SBIR Phase I project is to develop and demonstrate a low cost, lightweight, miniaturized Integrated Collision Avoidance Enhanced GN&C System for Smart Air Vehicles. The proposed system takes advantage of the latest Commercial-Off-the-Shelf (COTS) components, American GNC Corporation's products and patents to achieve an integrated, guidance, navigation, and control (GN&C) micro system for air vehicles, which is capable of assisting aircraft pilots to avoid approach and collision with ground/water and other near objects in flight. The various data from the IMU, GPS chipset, terrain data base, magnetometer, and object detection sensors are processed to produce collision warning audio/visual messages and collision avoidance guidance commands in a closed-loop system. In this Phase I project, the feasibility, as well as functions, specifications, hardware architecture, algorithms and software of the proposed system will be investigated, simulated, and demonstrated.

In addition to the potential applications for NASA's Enabling Concepts and Technologies program, the proposed GN&C system is also well-suited?due to its small size, low cost, and light weight?to a wide range of NASA systems, including: remote sensing platforms, extravehicular robotic systems, telerobotics, and UAVs. The product developed in this project, Integrated Collision Avoidance Enhanced GN&C System is applicable to several commercial applications including Air Traffic Management (ATM), smart vehicles, and intelligent transportation systems.

This is a mature technology (TRL 7+) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

None of these are guaranteed paths for this specific project — TechPort itself doesn't have an "apply" button. Reaching out to the contact(s) above with a specific question is usually the fastest way to find out what's actually open.