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Meeting	ACGS Committee Meeting 114 - Cleveland, Ohio - October 2014
Agenda Location	4 GENERAL COMMITTEE TECHNICAL SESSION 4.2 Government Agency Summary Reports 4.2.2 DoD 4.2.2.1 AFRL
Title	AFRL
Presenter	Dave Doman
Available Downloads*	presentation
	Downloads are available to members who are logged in and either Active* or attended this meeting.
Abstract	The Control Science Center at the Air Force Research Laboratory is focused on control related research in six areas: autonomous control of unmanned air vehicles, hypersonic vehicle dynamics and control, verification and validation of complex systems, precision airdrop, aircraft thermal management, and flapping wing micro air vehicle flight control. The UAV team recently completed flight testing of a decentralized control scheme for managing multiple UAVs that monitor a field of unattended ground sensors (UGS) at a large military exercise called Talisman Sabre. The system is completely autonomous. Sensor information is collected and stored autonomously by the UGSs. UAVs autonomously query the UGSs and download all intruder information. UAVs utilize an autonomous algorithm to determine likely locations of the intruder, to fuse multiple UGS information, and to mitigate false alarms. Once a UAV collects overhead imagery of an intruder, it autonomously delivers that information by re-routing back to an operator. In the area of micro air vehicle control, a method for controlling a tailless flapping wing micro air vehicle that enables four degree-of-freedom insect-like maneuverability to be achieved using only two physical actuators was developed. The method works by independently varying the stroke-plane velocities of passively rotating wings, such that commanded cycle-averaged forces and moments can be produced. Air table and force balance experiments have demonstrated that roll, yaw, and translational control is possible using only two brushless DC motors. A 34 gram vehicle has achieved lift-off and has shown limited controllability. Further reductions in weight and mechanism efficiency are in progress and are expected to result in a limited endurance fully controllable system. In the area of hypersonic vehicle control, the group is focusing on implementing an adaptive control law on the HiFIRE 6 test vehicle. This test vehicle is a cold-flow path scramjet aircraft that will fly at Mach 6 after separation from a sounding rocket. The HiFIRE 6 flight test is scheduled for launch in 2016. In the area of verification and validation we are working to develop techniques for verifying correctness of human-automation generated mission plans. To date, we have developed a formal framework that models the execution of mission plans as a transition system and mission specifications as Linear Temporal Logic formulae. This framework has been used in the development of a multi-UAV VIP escort scenario that is suitable for human-in-the-loop testing. In the area thermal management we are focused on control and mission planning schemes that maximize aircraft thermal endurance and range. In the area of precision airdrop we are focused on the development of physics based algorithms that use near real-time LIDAR wind field measurements for determination of air release points for unguided drogue/parachute systems. Methods for minimizing impact dispersions of multiple packages by staggering main chute deployment times and load ordering have been developed and show considerable promise. Real time parallel implementation of the algorithm on a graphics processing unit with wireless interfaces to main chute timers is in progress in preparation for drop tests in the 2016 timeframe.