Micro AVIARI, Big Results Published Aug. 30, 2010 By Holly Jordan Air Vehicles WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio -- In a May 2010 ribbon-cutting ceremony, the Air Force Research Laboratory launched the Micro Air Vehicle Integration and Application Research Institute, or µAVIARI, Indoor Flight Test Laboratory, the new $1.5 million facility dedicated to the advancement of Micro Air Vehicle technologies. The Indoor Flight Test Laboratory is the cornerstone of the µAVIARI, a facility that incorporates four distinct MAV development labs into one building. In addition to the Indoor Flight Lab, the µAVIARI includes the Unsteady Aerodynamics Laboratory, the MAV Fabrication Laboratory, and the Flapping-Wing Bench Test Laboratory. These labs will enable scientists to research, design, fabricate, and test MAVs from start to finish. They also allow for the separation of airframe development from sensor, communication, and payload development, meaning that these technologies can be developed independently and simultaneously. MAVs are an emerging technology for the urban battlefield. These flight vehicles--less than 2 ft long and potentially as small as a dragonfly--are designed for entering and loitering in urban settings virtually unnoticed, a quality enabling them to perform missions too difficult or dangerous for troops. The Indoor Flight Test Laboratory allows researchers to simulate an urban environment, complete with building fronts and controlled winds. Composed of a test chamber and a separate control room, the Indoor Flight Lab provides a test environment in which researchers can record the motion of MAV flight using a Vicon® Industries-developed camera system. Using the same type of technology employed by video game developers to animate human beings, reflectors placed on MAVs enable the cameras to track position and orientation of the vehicle with an accuracy of approximately 1 mm.