Bio-Inspired sUAS with Extended Flight Time for Situational Awareness

Viele Exploratory Sustainable Solutions proposes to develop a new design for a small bioinspired highly agile unmanned aerial system for use in reconnaissance, surveillance, and target acquisition applications. The proposed design is small, with lightweight and low cost, along with low power consumption and is based on bioinspired flapping wing birds-in-nature platforms. The new type of aerial system uses a unique actuation and wing morphing system to reduce size, weight, and required power while possessing a low audible signature. The proposed aerial system uses advanced energy harvesting techniques to allow for increased flight time measured to other comparable aerial configurations. In addition, the proposed design incorporates a revolutionary robust flight control system providing superior efficiency and disturbance rejection to external effects such as wind gusts, high wind conditions, and harsh weather environments. In addition, the airframe utilizes a revolutionary navigation system for GPS-denied applications. During Phase II, the team will finalize a design for a bioinspired small unmanned aerial system configuration, perform a trade-off study to optimize system performance and ensure high manufacturability, develop a bill of material, and fabricate a prototype system and perform testing to evaluate the prototype performance along with a final demonstration of the technology.