Regulatory agencies worldwide are working towards safely integrating unmanned aircraft into their respective national airspaces. Reliability assessment of unmanned aircraft is a key step in the certification process. This thesis presents an analysis framework for the reliability assessment of small unmanned aircraft. Specifically, the effect of the placement of actuators and control surfaces on...

This paper presents a net-centric communication, command, and control architecture for a heterogeneous unmanned aircraft system comprised of small and miniature unmanned aircraft. An integrated system was developed using a bottomup design approach to reflect and enhance the interplay between networked communication and autonomous aircraft coordination. The advantages of the approach are demonst...

Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Laboratories has been performing collaborative unmanned surface and unmanned air vehicle (USV and UAV, respectively) experiments in cooperation with the U.S. Navy. This multi-domain collaborative research focused on extending unmanned vehicles into useful partners in maritime security utilizing intelligent onboard behaviors, collaborative control, and efficie...

Unmanned Aerial System doctrine has been lacking, latent, or ignored as a prescribing design element in the emerging field of swarm technology. In this paper, an integrated methodology for designing a swarm unmanned aerial system (UAS) in parallel with swarm UAS mission doctrine is discussed. The structure of this methodology is derived from heuristics from the model-based systems engineering, ...

This paper reports results from field deployments of the Tempest Unmanned Aircraft System, the first of its kind of unmanned aircraft system designed to perform in situ sampling of supercell thunderstorms, including those that produce tornadoes. A description of the critical system components, consisting of the unmanned aircraft, ground support vehicles, communications network, and custom softw...

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In this paper, we analyze the performance various sensor fusion models using an unmanned ground vehicle. In a given attack scenario, we examine how attacks influence on each fusion model by comparing the results of different models We conduct the experiments with real measurement data obtained from an unmanned ground vehicle. Keywords— Sensor Fusion Model; Attack; Resiliency

The SHIELD software model performs two distinct functions: first, it provides a capability to assess the through-mission survivability of an unmanned spacecraft against debris impact; and second, it provides a means to optimise the debris protection strategy of an unmanned spacecraft. In this paper we illustrate the second of these two functions by applying SHIELD to the protection optimisation...

The Family of Integrated Rapid Response Equipment (FIRRE) is an advanced technology demonstration program intended to develop a family of affordable, scalable, modular, and logistically supportable unmanned systems to meet urgent operational force-protection needs and requirements worldwide. The near-term goal is to provide the best available unmanned ground systems to the warfighter in Iraq an...