Micro Munition Technologies: Smart Material-Enabled Hovering Ducted-Fan MAV, Optimized for BDI Mission

AVID proposes a smart material-enabled hovering ducted-fan micro air vehicle (MAV) to greatly enhance the bomb damage information (BDI) capabilities of the U.S. Air Force. Such a design offers a more intuitive search capability for the BDI mission. Unlike fixed-wing MAVs, a ducted-fan MAV would stop, hover, and investigate an area, rotating to pan the sensor right and left, zooming in and out: observing much like a human would investigate an area. Phase I results showed that a ducted-fan MAV could carry up to six times more electronics and payload than a similarly sized fixed-wing MAV. Modeling, design, and wind tunnel testing of innovative smart material-based control effectors will be a main focus of this effort. Flight control laws will be developed to fully leverage the new control effectors, and flight simulations will be used to evaluate the merit of the new technologies. Prototypes of each smart material subcomponent will be used to quantify potential weight and power advantages. AVID SPOT (Software Pixels On Target) will utilize flight simulation results to evaluate the quality of the sensor performance during a BDI mission. Finally, a vehicle design with integrated smart material control effectors will be presented for fabrication in Phase III.