Unmanned Operational Envelope Expands Through Sense & Avoid Technologies

  • Published
  • By Holly Jordan, AFRL/RBOO
  • Air Vehicles
WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio --  The Air Force Research Laboratory took another step toward developing conflict and collision avoidance technologies for unmanned aircraft with the Multiple Intruder Autonomous Avoidance (MIAA) flight demonstration. The demonstration was a five-day effort to evaluate the software algorithms and other subsystems that make up the Sense And Avoid (SAA) Advanced Technology Demonstration (ATD).
 
For the event, a Calspan Flight Research Learjet served as the in-flight simulator with a second Calspan Learjet, a Calspan Beech Bonanza, the FAA Tech Center's Beechcraft King Air, and the FAA Tech Center's Convair serving as intruder aircraft. During the demonstration, the in-flight simulator aircraft, equipped with the SAA system, encountered multiple intruding aircraft. Through these test scenarios, researchers were able to observe and gather data on the Electro-Optic sensors, Traffic Collision Avoidance System (TCAS), and Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast System (ADS-B), some of the key components of the SAA package.

These systems work in conjunction, each providing different information that is processed through a series of complex algorithms into data that provides inputs to the flight control system onboard the aircraft, identifying where and when to maneuver to avoid conflict and collisions. All the flights were successfully completed, with the researchers collecting valuable data on all the SAA components. The data gathered will be used to further refine the SAA algorithms to increase the variety of scenarios the system can process.

The SAA program seeks to expand confidence in autonomy and unmanned aircraft by using a series of sensors to detect other intruding vehicles, manned or unmanned, and maneuver to avoid conflict. Through this SAA program, researchers hope to move toward enabling the operations of unmanned aircraft in the National Airspace System.