Aurora Flight Sciences and MIT have been developing tools and techniques that, together with existing 3D environment decision-making and navigation tools developed by AMRDEC in the PALACE program, are well-suited to the problem of autonomous vertical landing on unprepared landing sites. In this program, Aurora will team with MIT researchers and UC Santa Cruz (UCSC licenses PALACE technologies for AMRDEC) to combine hybrid-system rapidly-expanding random trees (RRTs), PALACE technologies, careful system engineering/integration, and Phase II experimental demonstrations. The result will be a general purpose, environmentally robust, autonomous vertical landing system for remote, unprepared/sloped landing sites with obstacles, environmental disturbances, and minimal ground crew support/training. System engineering will focus on creating a system which minimizes size, weight, power, and cost (SWAP-C) requirements for sensing and computation.
Benefit: Developing an integrated, low SWAP-C system for autonomous landing at difficult, unprepared locations is one of the key technologies for future VTOL UAVs performing perch and stare, ground loiter, Medevac, ship-board landing, and urban operations. Thus the potential for both military and commercial applications is quite broad. Both the Cargo UAS program, and Auroras stable of VTOL UAVs, including GoldenEye and Excalibur, will directly benefit. Auroras VTOL UAVs are particularly suited to many of the foreseen commercial VTOL applications, and thus will benefit directly from the technology developed here, and speed their adaptation for, and integration into commercial products. Manned helicopters could also see improved landing safety, if the methods developed here are adapted to provide a safe landing director.
Keywords: Vertical Take-off and Landing, Vertical Take-off and Landing, Falsification for Reachable Set Analysis, Cargo UAS, Helicopter Safety, UAV landing, RRTs
