Onboard, Adaptive Flight Controls and Cooperative Mission Planning

There is a common set of challenges for both unmanned aerial system (UAS) integration in congested battlefield airspace and commercial Urban Air Mobility (UAM) applications: (1) Coordination and cooperative mission planning among a wide set of unmanned and manned aircraft, with a variety of platform sizes, flight characteristics and capabilities (e.g., fixed-wing vs. multicopter vs. vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL)/hybrid). Additionally, damage or wear to an aircraft can degrade flight capabilities, meaning that the flight capabilities change during a mission/flight. (2) Risks of cyber-attacks/hijacking of UAS because of non-secure avionics and communications – a hacker can wreak destruction on the system by taking control of just a few aircraft. (3) Unreliable or inconsistent telemetry and command and control (C2) links, especially if real-time mission planning and cooperative controls are ground-based, communication lapses can cause major issues and incidents. While no single technology will solve all of these issues, an opportunity exists to address several of these challenges by migrating some flight planning, decision-making and aircraft health-monitoring capabilities from ground-based assets to cybersecure avionics/mission computers on the UAS itself. To extend this capability to as many platforms as possible, it is important that both the avionics (for UAS, commonly referred to as autopilots or flight controllers) and the health-monitoring/cooperative control algorithms are as platform- and sensor-agnostic as possible – a proprietary solution that only works on a single UAS platform doesn’t address the larger challenge. Asymmetric Technologies and our Research Institute partners at Ohio University and The Ohio State University propose to use Asymmetric’s IronClad Secure Flight Controller (SFC) as a centralized hub to implement an onboard autonomous, adaptive flight control and path planning capability that is directly tied to a real-time aircraft health monitoring module. These enhancements eliminate the need for slower, telemetry-link-dependent, ground-based decision-making that can result in UAS mishaps or crashes. For example, if an airspace conflict is detected, the UAS can autonomously re-route itself while also accounting for its real-time flight performance capabilities. The technology also allows for multi-UAS formation-flight or “adaptive cruise control” for UAS as well as safer emergency “ditch” path planning that also accounts for vehicle health, with a specific focus on VTOL/hybrid UAS platforms and the transition period from hover to forward flight.