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Meeting	ACGS Committee Meeting 101 - Salt Lake City - March 2008
Agenda Location	4 GENERAL COMMITTEE TECHNICAL SESSION 4.2 Research Institutions, Industry, and University Reports 4.2.1 Research Institutes and Companies 4.2.1.1 Athena
Title	Athena
Presenter	V. Gavrilets
Available Downloads*	presentation
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Abstract	Athena Technologies, Inc. is a provider of integrated guidance, navigation, control, and vehicle management systems primarily for unmanned aircraft market. Our GuideStar products are deployed on a number of operational UAVs and target drones. US Army RQ-7B Shadow 200 aircraft, equipped with GuideStar GS211e, logged over 300,000 flight hours to date in Iraq and Afghanistan. Athena Technologies uses its patented feedback LTI’zation design process to enable fast development of feedback control systems with guaranteed stability and performance robustness properties. Our streamlined, rigorous, and largely automated process for design and evaluation of control system performance eliminates the need for costly iterations. Recently we made a decision to expand into manned aviation, making use of the technologies we developed for UAVs. We are certifying our Micro INS product as a standby ADAHRS (Air Data, Attitude and Heading Reference System). In the future, we intend to expand the range of certified products to primary ADAHRS, autopilots for general aviation, and fly-by-wire flight control systems. FAA certified, multiple-redundant flight control systems will be required for future integration of UAVs into commercial airspace. Another enabling technology is UAV’s ability to maintain stable flight in case of failure, such as stuck control surface. Such ability will also help military aircraft, manned and unmanned, to recover in case of sustained airframe damage. Athena, under DARPA’s support, demonstrated its damage tolerance flight controls on a subscale F-18. In April 2007 we demonstrated recovery of original performance, and flawless automatic landing after physical loss of an aileron in flight. In the upcoming flight tests, slated for April 2008, we intend to shed up to 30% of surface area of one of the wings, and demonstrate automatic recovery.