Dr. John Melton, Co-Principal Investigator, Networked UAV Teaming Experiment, NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA

In a joint project between NASA's Ames Research Center and Dryden Flight Research Center (Edwards, CA) , investigators completed flight tests over a "virtual" forest fire to evaluate new flight-control software to give uninhabited aerial vehicles (UAVs) the ability to autonomously react to obstacles as they fly pre-programmed missions. Dr. Melton was one of the principal investigators involved in developing and testing the flight control software.

NASA Tech Briefs: What was the purpose of the virtual experiments?

Dr. John Melton: There were three different aspects of the Dryden flight experiments. The first was to flight-demonstrate the use of Boids algorithms - motion rules that, for example, you see in movies when they need to simulate a flock of birds or a herd of animals. We used those rules and applied them to our aircraft to help them transit from one corner of our test region over to another, opposite corner. A lot of people have used these rules in simulations of UAVs, but it was always our goal to do as much as we could in actual flight because there is often a large difference between simulation and practice.

The second aspect was to do what we call dynamic replanning. This was done to simulate, in some sense, a forest service wildfire support mission. The idea is that you would have some futuristic "scout" airplanes that could be sent out after a satellite or groundbased sensor detects a lightning strike. These small airplanes could go out and look for potential places where fires might be starting.

The third aspect simply was to test our ability to command these aircraft to not only get to their assigned waypoints, but to arrive at those waypoints at specific times. Our goal was always to be within ±2 seconds. Many scientists are looking at using teams of similar small aircraft for Earth observation and environmental monitoring tasks.

NTB: Could the software be used for other commercial applications?

Dr. Melton: There are so many missions for these small autonomous airplanes to perform, encompassing a huge range of possibilities. Some important examples are Earth observation, wildlife management, or monitoring fisheries.

Additionally, there are many homeland security aspects to this work as well. If a dirty bomb exploded or a biological agent was released, these aircraft could sample the air downwind in order to not only inform the populous, but also to help first responders make appropriate decisions for their own safety.

Other possible applications include the monitoring of pipelines and power lines, and, all kinds of precision agricultural surveys. Disaster relief is also a possibility. There were several small airplanes that were used over the tsunami regions, some of which had the task of looking for bodies in inaccessible locations.

NTB: What is the next step for the UAVs and the new software?

Dr. Melton: Since the tests, we have had some inquiries from a variety of people. The one that we most likely will study is the flight testing of automatic collision avoidance software that is being developed at Dryden. You can afford to test collision avoidance software on these nearly expendable aircraft in ways that you probably wouldn't on manned aircraft. You can actually run them close to each other and put them on direct collision courses, and test the software to make sure that everybody moves the right way in order to get out of each other's path.

A full transcript of this interview appears online at www.techbriefs.com/whoswho. Contact Dr. John Melton at John.E.Melton@nasa.gov. Visit NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate at www.aeronautics.nasa.gov.