LYNNTECH INC. — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: Perching is an essential tactic for extending the duration of Small Unmanned Aerial System

Description

Perching is an essential tactic for extending the duration of Small Unmanned Aerial System (SUAS) missions. Sustained flight is energetically costly and largely unnecessary during a passive Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) mission. Data can be collected quietly for extended periods with low-power sensors if the SUAS is positioned strategically. Autonomous landing has been demonstrated in SUAS for well-characterized sites, however unaided identification and evaluation of potential landing zones (LZs) in an unmapped environment remains unsolved and requires considerable abstraction from raw sensor data. Relevant considerations for site evaluation include ability to support the airframe (site slope, roughness, and stability), purview on the area of interest, stealth, ease of access and egress, and suitability for maintaining ground station communications. Lynntech"s Landing Site Assessment (LSA) system processes multiple sensor streams with a multistage layered framework to quickly identify potential landing zones and evaluate them against predefined metrics both autonomously and in real-time. The vision system generates a 3D model of the local environment through varying visibility conditions (day, night, dust, fog, rain, and smoke) and utilizes that data to identify, select, survey, and exploit a locally-optimal landing zone to conduct its mission and return to base.