Aerosystems Laboratory
The Aerospace Systems laboratory underwent a major renovation this year. The laboratory renovation was made possible by University of Minnesota matching funds associated with a DARPA contract. This lab supports research in software-enabled control as applied to uninhabited aerial vehicles. Existing facilities include a flexible structure instrumented for experimental studies in structural control.
One of the key projects supported from this lab is Professor Balas’ DARPA Program (managed by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory), An Integrated, Multi-Layer Approach to Software-Enabled Control (SEC): Mission Planning to Vehicle. The program will develop a software environment to demonstrate integrated control system technologies which enable the use of multi-unmanned combat air vehicles in strategic situations. Test case scenarios for splitting and merging of Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles (UCAV’s) will be selected based upon concepts of operations. System requirements will include adaptation to subsystem malfunctions, imperfect models, system uncertainty and unknown battlefield characteristics to achieve all high-level mission objectives. A software architecture and framework for implementation of advanced integrated control algorithms will be developed. The software implementation provides and integrated multi-layer approach to provide autonomous reconfigurable vehicle control capability for UCAV’s from top level multi-vehicle mission management to inner-loop vehicle control. This implementation will be demonstrated via real-life software simulation.
The University of Minnesota has teamed with UC-Berkeley and Caltech in the development, enhancement, and transition of integrated control and software technologies. This team possesses the key ingredients needed to achieve program goals. The strength of the university team members is in the area of robust system algorithm and tool development. The University of Minnesota team is working closely with Honeywell Laboratories and Boeing on the DARPA SEC project.
Last Modified: 2007-07-24 at 10:09:29 -- this is in International Standard Date and Time Notation