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Meeting	ACGS Committee Meeting 94 - Reno - November 2004
Agenda Location	4 GENERAL COMMITTEE TECHNICAL SESSION 4.2 Research Institutions, Industry, and University Reports 4.2.1 Universities 4.2.1.4 University of Kansas
Title	University of Kansas
Presenter	Richard Colgren
Available Downloads*	presentation
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Abstract	KU Research on Autonomous UAVs and Hypersonic Vehicles Intelligent Unoccupied Air Vehicles (UAVs) represent a major area of multidisciplinary, systems oriented research and development at the University of Kansas. Current work is being conducted using both fixed-wing and rotary-wing UAVs. These vehicles are both purchased from the manufacturers and assembled as is, are modified to meet the goals of our research, or are completely new vehicle designs developed by the Department of Aerospace Engineering. Current research is on designing, modeling, and flight-testing these vehicles to develop accurate dynamic computer simulations. Another key research topic in this area to enable unpiloted vehicles as viable systems is the development of reliable autonomous control technologies implemented within embedded computer systems. Our ultimate research goal focuses on the development of cutting-edge embedded control technologies to enable the realization of autonomous vehicles capable of conducting safe operations in conjunction with other vehicles. This is required to achieve a high level of mission effectiveness and to accommodate real-world operational issues. This research is on developing the framework for a real-time embedded vehicle management system to obtain self-awareness, external awareness, and perform intelligent decision-making based on that awareness. Internal awareness for a system such as a UAV allows pertinent information about the vehicle's internal state (i.e., subsystem status, mission resources, et cetera) to be obtained and processed by the vehicle management system. Subsystem status is a primary concern in this area. The emphasis is on safety and mission critical systems. The desire for the UAV is to improve its reliability and mission effectiveness to the order of piloted aircraft. External awareness for a system entails gathering and fusing data about the outside world. For a UAV, the autonomous air vehicle must have the sensing and processing resources to identify and track other air traffic, weather hazards, and terrain. It must be capable of receiving and processing air-traffic control (ATC) commands and orders from an off-board controlling agent. Finally, the air vehicle must be able to take internal and external state information and make intelligent decisions that will ensure safe operations and the highest level of mission success. The goals of our NSF and NASA efforts are to develop the tools and technologies for demonstrating these capabilities in flight test. As a second major research area, work on hypersonic vehicle modeling and simulation at The University of Kansas will be discussed. This work is currently being conducted in conjunction with California State University, Los Angeles, the University of Southern California, and the University of Texas at San Antonio. The model being developed is of a generic hypersonic vehicle based on the X-30 and on research conducted at NASA Langley in the 1990s. A functional based model of this vehicle concept has been developed by California State University, Los Angeles and the University of Kansas. Controllers for this concept are being developed at the University of Texas at San Antonio and the University of Southern California. Recent CFD results developed by California State University, Los Angeles have been analyzed at The University of Kansas and are being implemented in Matlab and FORTRAN in functional form. The eventual plan is to have a full nonlinear simulation implemented within The University of Kansas’ AST 4000 flight simulation demonstrating ground to orbit capabilities.