Common Aircraft Retrofit for Novel Autonomous Control (CARNAC)

Robotics on the battlefield has proven itself to be an indispensable technology providing greater access, intelligence, and time on target with decreased direct exposure of Warfighters to both known and unknown threats. Initially, military robots were completely tele-operated with no autonomous functionality. A majority of todays systems still fall into that category and require at least one dedicated Warfighter for continuous control of robotic assets. However, automation is now being introduced to many aspects of military operations. The U.S. Army is actively researching automated convoy operations. Air Force Unmanned Aerial Vehicles are providing automated target surveillance and target acquisition. Naval unmanned systems are providing autonomous monitoring of critical regions. The Common Aircraft Retrofit for Novel Autonomous Control (CARNAC) project will create a fully autonomous flight system that will control all aspects of aircraft flight using robotic controls. The proposed system will interface to the same physical controls that a human pilot interacts with and will receive data from on-board gauges and visual alerts. As designed, the CARNAC system will not tie into any on-board data feeds or on-board power. The RE2 team consists of industry leaders with experience in autonomy, vision processing, manipulation, and autonomous flight.