Covert Precision Aerial Delivery System

ABSTRACT: In today"s warfare, accurate payload placement is necessary to maintain the tactical advantage we have been fostering throughout our history. Continuing evolution in air to ground mission objectives has brought new opportunities to technologically evolve the state of the art in accurate air drop capabilities. The CPADS effort is a significant opportunity to develop a new solution for accurate payload placement. This opportunity also brings new very relevant challenges in increased mechanical modularity, increased operational autonomy, and decreased system level cost. SeaLandAire Technologies together with its team member CH Robotics researched the development of a tandem wing glider as a solution to the military"s aerial delivery performance gap. Our proposed approach is an autonomous, covert glider designed to deliver payloads to the ground with a high degree of accuracy. Its novelty lies in the operational simplicity achieved through the use of a self-contained custom autopilot and mission planner, the repeatable and safe payload delivery obtained using stall and parachute maneuvers, and the high amount of accuracy achieved with a sophisticated autopilot path planner and a unique parachute reefing system. A glider-based solution has a number of advantages over other methods, including decreased cost, and increased payload, covertness, and landing accuracy. BENEFIT: This Phase II program will culminate in a hardware demonstration for our proposed covert precision aerial delivery system (ADS). The program will prove the original technical feasibility studies established in the Phase I effort. The focus of the Phase II program is to prove the performance of the proposed CPADS system referenced to the original solicitation requirements. With this information, the ability of the CPADS to provide the needed supplies and sensors to ground forces and specific locations will be demonstrated. Specifically, the development of the low cost autopilot system can positively effect future R & D in the continued development unmanned aerial systems, ground vehicles, and autonomous surface vehicles. Currently autopilot technology that is available on the market, from suppliers such as Microbotics and Procerus, can be prohibitively expensive for initial research and development effortsspecifically phase I SBIR efforts. Providing the market with a lower cost version could have significant implications on the continued development of these critical fields.