The Defense Applied Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded a contract to Scientific Systems Company (SSCI) to develop autonomous visual control systems for small, unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) in cluttered environments without GPS or human operator assistance.
SSCI’s Rapid Adaptive preDiction for Vision-based Autonomous Navigation and Evasion (Rapid ADVANCE) programme is designed to reactive navigation. It supports low size, weight and power requirements on small UAVs.
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Scientific Systems Company founder and CEO Raman Mehra said: "Our products provide the brains and nervous systems for unmanned vehicles to operate autonomously and accomplish their missions in difficult environments."
The SSCI project has been guided by N Andrew Browning, which is a part of DARPA’s fast lightweight autonomy (FLA) programme.
The FLA programme aims to develop and demonstrate the capability for small and fast UAVs to fly autonomously through complex, cluttered environments.
DARPA selected SSCI and two other teams to develop advanced autonomy software using commercially available components.
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By GlobalDataDarpa’s UAV platform puts emphasis on the comparative performance of the sensing and control systems.
SSCI’s rapid advance project is a two-year project, for which the company has partnered with AeroVironment.
The project will witness AeroVironment’s capabilities in small UAV flight dynamics and control.
Algorithms developed under this programme will help unmanned systems by reducing size, weight and power requirements of the autonomy system.
It also helps eliminating wireless remote-control links, and navigating through unknown, complex and cluttered environments without GPS.
SSCI has been engineering intelligent control systems for defence and commercial applications since 1976. The company also provides advanced mission planning software, mature image-based navigation systems for GPS-denied environments on a variety of platforms.
The company recently performed initial flight tests and demonstration of autonomous, multi-UAV aerial monitoring and tracking technologies designed for real-time, aerial fire perimeter surveillance.
Image: DARPA awarded a contract to SSCI for developing autonomous visual control systems for small UAVs. Photo: courtesy of Scientific Systems Company.
