Design Guidance for Deck Motion Compensation Systems using Automated System-Level Performance Analysis and Characterization Tool

SSCI proposes a Covariance Analysis-based Performance Evaluation (CAPE) approach for Deck Motion Compensation (DMC) systems for UAVs landing on a ship deck. The resulting Automated System-level Performance and Characterization Tool for Deck Motion Compensation (ASPECT-DMC) provides an analytical basis for sensor requirements development, estimation and prediction performance evaluation, and closed-loop control scheme verification and validation. Phase I will address fixed wing UAVs, but will be extended to rotor-craft landing on small vessels during Phase II. The uncertainty propagation of CAPE enables simplified uncertainty propagation of the closed-loop control system and exposes the flow-down of uncertainty of each subsystem. This approach computes the performance bounds orders of magnitude faster than Monte-Carlo analysis. In Phase I we plan to leverage our prior work in DMC design, system-level analysis, our current work toward INAV-SL (Image-based Navigation for Ship-board Landing, a Phase III backup landing system for Fire Scout), and use ship and wave motion data from Applied Physical Sciences (APS) to evaluate a prototype DMC system (state estimation, APS-furnished deck motion and prediction, and GNC) with included environmental uncertainty. Phase II will mature the technology by demonstrating robustness to different vehicle models, wave dynamics and uncertainty toward inclusion with the Fire Scout PoR.