NASA Phase I Selected for Award: LiDAR-Supported Emergency Landing System for AAM Vehicles

The autonomous LiDAR-supported Emergency Landing System for AAM (LELSA) emulates the perception, cognition, and decision making of expert operators to provide an onboard capability to accomplish the complex emergency (precautionary or forced) landing task autonomously.  LELSA leverages both existing data and data acquired through in-flight perception (LiDAR) to: (1) locate potential emergency landing sites; (2) continuously generate emergency landing plans that maximize site assessment quality and the likelihood of a safe landing; (3) continuously update its on-board assessments based on incoming LiDAR data (acquired knowledge); and (4) provide plan information to the on-board flight computer.