NASA Phase II Proposal Awarded

Loss of control of an UAS operated at low altitude poses a hazard to people and property on the ground and is a barrier to operations in the National Airspace. Automated upset recovery technology will reduce reliance on a human operator to mitigate hazards posed by loss of control due to upset, leading to greater operational freedom.  The Phase I research has developed a recovery system that replaces the perception, cognition, and decision making of a skilled operator with a two-stage automated recovery architecture and an innovative upset detection system. The decision about when to activate each stage of a recovery is difficult to make at design-time, so the upset detection system employs a novel statistical testing framework that combines at run-time numerous pieces of data including vehicle attitude, rotational rate, and controller performance to answer the question: Has an upset occurred? During Phase I, the recovery system was evaluated in a high quality simulation of a small fixed-wing vehicle.  All hardware needed for flight testing was obtained, and systems integration work was performed. The Phase II effort will focus on flight testing of the recovery system, including tests with multiple vehicle designs. The Phase II team includes a flight testing and commercialization partner with a track record of safe, legal, and effective UAS inspection operations in support of commercial customers.