Autonomous Guidance for small UAV Safe Flight Operations in the National Airspace System (NAS)

Safe flight by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in unrestricted airspace, including the National Airspace, will only be possible with effective and reliable Sense and Avoid technologies and techniques. Several projects, including four Office of Naval Research STTR's, are underway to develop sensors capable of addressing the first aspect. Latitude Engineering, LLC proposes to address the second aspect using modern control methods to design and analyze a collision avoidance control algorithm that will first assure minimum separation distances are maintained, and second, will avoid a collision, should a dangerous situation arise. Our approach uses differential game theory to develop well-defined zones of complete or partial safety to analyze the volume around the UAV and the performance of the control law. The algorithm will be capable of effective avoidance using sensors of different performance characteristics, including those that output only bearing information, such as acoustic or optical sensors, or complete relative position, such as radar or ADS-B. In addition, the control law will be designed so as to balance the requirements of safe flight with needs of the mission.