BIHRLE APPLIED RESEARCH INC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: AF161-065

Description

ABSTRACT: The unmanned aircraft system (UAS) industry has been working towards integration in the national airspace system (NAS).The work proposed facilitates unmanned systems to co-exist with normal air traffic without major modification to the current and planned infrastructure.The Department of Defense has emphasized not only the NAS integration requirement through their Unmanned Aircraft System Airspace Integration Plan, but also the requirement to deploy globally into foreign and international airspace. Most UAS operate with a remote operator with technology and trends pushing UAS designs to operating autonomously. In either scenario, with a pilot or autonomous operations, sensing and avoiding (SAA) other NAS users is key to UAS integration. Current avoidance technologies include both Ground Based Sense and Avoid (GBSAA) and Airborne Sense and Avoid (ABSAA).Sensor typically used for SAA become overwhelmed in terminal area due to ground clutter.To address this situation a TeRminal Area Conflict Estimation System (TRACES) is proposed to synthesize and present UAS data in terminal area. The systems uses voice recognition of terminal area broadcasts combined with advanced statistics measures to predict conflict volumes and target trajectories in the terminal area.; BENEFIT: TRACES will provide a UAS the ability to predict passive conflicts in the terminal area. The system will be deployed to military and civil unmanned systems to facilitate safe navigation in the national airspace.