Innovative Avionics Systems for Uninhabited Air Vehicles

The University of Kansas has generated around $850,000 of NASA research funding and equipment for work on the modular open source wireless avionics system and related projects over the last two and a half years. The first project was the autonomous guidance, navigation and control system for the R-MAX UAV. The second project was the development of an Artificial Intelligence based guidance and navigation system. The last project involved the implementation of the Time Triggered bus technology which added additional funding in 2006. A tremendous potential exists for additional NASA and American GNC/Army funding in late 2007. Bridge funding is urgently required to support two graduate students to continue work in this area. The objective is to continue the design and construction of a robust modular open source wireless avionics system, which can be ported between different types of uninhabited air vehicles (UAVs). The system will be used in conjunction with a dynamic model of the uninhabited vehicle and a fight management system to result in a fully autonomous low cost flight control system. Current UAVs in service have a high failure rate owing to the amount of commercial off the shelf (COTS) components used primarily to minimize development costs and faster deployment time. The research will also involve designing a bus system for the on-board hardware using the Time Triggered Protocol (TTP) where communication and data transmission occurs at predefined time intervals (typically microseconds). Also, a fault tolerant communication and data transmission system will be designed and implemented, increasing the system reliability. Transmitting data to and from the ground station and using TTP and a fault tolerant system will greatly reduce the uncertainty in control and communication, thereby increasing the Safety Integrity Level (SIL) of UAVs.

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Active
• Sponsor Organizations:

  University of Kansas, Lawrence

  Transportation Research Institute
  2117 Learned Hall, 1530 W 15th Street
  Lawrence, KS  United States  66045
• Performing Organizations:

  University of Kansas, Lawrence

  Transportation Research Institute
  2117 Learned Hall, 1530 W 15th Street
  Lawrence, KS  United States  66045
• Principal Investigators:

  Colgren, Richard

• Start Date: 20071000
• Expected Completion Date: 0
• Actual Completion Date: 0
• Source Data: RiP Project 16739

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Airborne navigational aids; Aircraft pilotage; Automatic vessel control; Avionics; Drones; Research projects; Wireless communication systems
• Subject Areas: Administration and Management; Aviation; Planning and Forecasting;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01460025
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: University of Kansas, Lawrence
• Files: UTC, RIP
• Created Date: Jan 3 2013 1:17PM