Cargo helicopters, such as the Marine Corps CH-47
Benefit: The most immediate direct military benefit of this work is to enable safe automated landing for cargo or other UAS in austere environments in severe environmental conditions and on terrain with significant slope. In addition to cargo delivery, this capability will be critical for future military applications including wounded soldier evacuation. However, a perhaps bigger impact can be made in the commercial sector. Consider the air ambulance domain, in which 10% of the entire fleet crashed within a 5 year period. Because nearly all of the crashes involved pilots hitting something on the ground or in the air in poor weather (as opposed to mechanical failure), simply using the technology being developed as a pilot's aid for this application promises to significantly reduce crashes and fatalities.
Keywords: autonomous control, autonomous control, Autonomous landing. , Unmanned Air System,
