Award Data

Multi-rotors (e.g. quad-copters) typically have direct electric drive, where the electric motor shaft is directly coupled to the propeller shaft. The benefit of this configuration is simple and high fidelity control. But electric drive for vertical lift typically relies on lithium polymer batteries for energy storage, and battery specific energy is extremely low compared to internal combustion fue ...

This project addresses three modeling elements relevant to NASA's IADS research and ATD-2 project, two related to ramp operations at primary airports and one related to departure status at secondary airports. Departure scheduling requires departure status information from secondary airports that lack surface surveillance. We propose a method using aircraft transponder activation and data science ...

Air traffic control research, air traffic control operations and user operations rely on simulators that predict the future time history of three-dimensional aircraft trajectories. Such predicted trajectories are fundamental inputs to a wide variety of planning, monitoring and control tasks, including airline seasonal fleet planning, pre-departure flight planning, real-time airspace and airport lo ...

A wide variety of flow management techniques is employed every day in the NAS, from strategic Ground Delay Programs (GDP's) with national scope to local Miles-In-Trail (MIT) restrictions that affect traffic over a specific fix. The choice of the flow management technique to employ and the timing, extent, and other parameters associated with the technique are determined by controller judgment info ...

As the air transportation system becomes increasingly autonomous over the next twenty years, there will be an increasing need for monitoring capabilities that operate in the background to identify anomalous behaviors consistent with either safety or efficiency deficiencies. Today, these behaviors are largely detected after an incident has occurred. In July 2013, an Asiana Boeing 777 flew too low a ...

Energid Technologies proposes a game-theory inspired simulation tool for testing and validating robotic lunar and planetary missions. It applies Monte Carlo simulation within a multi-optimization environment tailored to the needs of NASA. Stochastic optimization is combined with randomized simulation to maximize multiple statistical measures of performance and calculate the parameters giving the e ...

Busek proposes to develop an innovative, hybrid direct-drive (HDD) Power Processing Unit (PPU) for CubeSat electric propulsion (EP) systems. The technological approach is an adaptation of a Busek patented technology, US patent number 8,550,405, entitled "Solar Powered Spacecraft Power System for a Hall Effect Thruster." This technology will immediately benefit the deep space 6U CubeSat currently b ...

Development of a robotic manipulator called Momentum Device Actuated Canfield (MoDAC) Manipulator for integration on to the assistive free flyers (AFF) being developed by NASA for the International Space Station is proposed. Integrating a robotic manipulator with an appropriate end-effector to an AFF provides the capability to perform several autonomous functions such as material handling, fetchin ...

Crown Consulting, Inc. proposes a new method of concept verification and validation for autonomous operations and identifying emergent behaviors. This method integrates several Internet technologies to enable massively parallel execution of National Airspace System (NAS) simulations in a cloud environment, vastly increasing the number of Monte Carlo simulation runs that can be executed in a given ...

Energid Technologies proposes a lightweight kinematically redundant robot arm and software toolkit to extend the capabilities of Assistive Free-Flyers (AFFs). The arm will leverage Energid's existing design actuated with modified smart servos to reduce cost and weight and improve performance. A unique feature of the arm is universal end-of-arm-tooling interface that provides extensibility through ...