National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Small Business Innovation Research & Technology Transfer 2003 Program Solicitations
TOPIC A7 Enabling Concepts and Technologies
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A7.01 Smart, Adaptive Aerospace Vehicles With Intelligence
A7.02 Revolutionary Flight Concepts
A7.03 Advanced Flight Platforms for Planetary Sciences
The ECT Program explores revolutionary concepts for aerospace systems, and performs fundamental research and development of high-payoff technologies to enable the strategic visions of the NASA Enterprises. Program objectives are to identify, develop, and transfer breakthrough technologies that have broad potential across many types of systems to provide increased scientific return at lower cost, and to enable missions and capabilities beyond current horizons. Current projects within the ECT Program are: 1) The Advanced Systems Concepts Project; 2) The Energetics Project; 3) The Advanced Measurement and Detection Project; 4) The Revolutionary Spacecraft Systems Project; and 5) The Large Space Systems Project. Information on the ECT Program can be found at https://erasmus.hq.nasa.gov. New technologies are sought that will enable the future development of Integrated Flight Vehicle System/Airspace Concepts. These integrated concepts will address both vehicle capability and airspace capability issues, and where appropriate, performance, cost, environment and safety/security issues. Flight vehicles or platforms considered here include both Earth and other planetary applications. Research is also sought which supports the future development of autonomic, self-managing vehicle configurations (e.g., self-configuration, self-optimization, self-healing and self-protection). Research activities may involve traditional disciplines, emerging technology areas, such as artificial intelligence, biomimetics and nanotechnologies, or multidisciplinary, synergistic topics.
A7.01 Smart, Adaptive Aerospace Vehicles With Intelligence
Lead Center: LaRC
Participating Center(s): ARC, GSFC
This subtopic emphasizes the roles of aerodynamics, aerothermodynamics, hypersonic airbreathing propulsion, adaptive software, vehicle dynamics in nonlinear flight regimes, and advanced instrumentation in research directed towards the identification, development and validation of enabling technologies that support the design of future, autonomous aerospace vehicle and platform concepts for both Earth and other planetary atmospheric flight applications. Some of the vehicle attributes envisioned by this subtopic include: a) "Smart" vehicle attributes - using advanced sensor technologies, flight vehicle systems are "highly aware" of onboard health and performance parameters, as well as the external flow field and potential threat environments; b) "Adaptive" vehicle attributes - flight avionics systems are reconfigurable, structural elements are self-repairing, flight control surfaces and/or effectors respond to changing flight parameters and/or vehicle system performance degradation; and c) "Intelligent" vehicle attributes - vehicle onboard processing and artificial intelligence technologies, interfaced with advanced vehicle structural component and subcomponent designs and appropriate actuating devices, reacts rapidly and effectively to changing performance demands and/or external threat environments. Future air vehicles with the above attributes will manage complexity, "know" themselves, continuously tune themselves, adapt to unpredictable conditions, prevent and recover from failures, and provide a safe environment.
For Earth atmospheric vehicles and platforms, both military and civil applications are sought, while for other planetary applications, emphasis is placed on configurations that enable the discovery of new science information. Concepts and corresponding enabling technologies are sought which expand the traditional boundaries of conventional piloted vehicles categories such as General Aviation (GA) or Personal Air Vehicles (PAV), as well as significantly advance the State-of-the-Art in remotely operated vehicle classes such as Long-Endurance Sensing Platforms (LESP), Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) or Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAV). Furthermore, for Earth applications, special emphasis is placed on research proposals that attempt to provide solutions for a future state in which revolutionary vehicles operate in a highly integrated airspace including hub & spoke, point-to-point, long-haul, unmanned aircraft, green aircraft, as well as a future state where air vehicle designs reflect a high level of integration in performance, safety/security, environmental impact and cost factors.
Specific areas of interest are:
- Conceptual flight vehicle/platform designs featuring variable levels of vehicle and airspace requirements integration, and/or smart, intelligent, and adaptive flight vehicle capabilities, as demonstrated by state-of-the-art systems analyses methods to determine enabling technologies and resulting impacts on future system integrated performance, environmental impact, and safety/security issues.
- New algorithms for predicting vehicle loads and response using minimal vehicle state information.
- Novel optimization methodologies to support conceptual design studies for highly integrated flight vehicle/air space concepts and/or smart, intelligent and adaptive flight vehicle capabilities, which demonstrate appropriate design variable selection, scaling techniques, suitable cost functions and improved computational efficiency.
- Physics-based modeling and simulation tools of multiple vehicle classes and corresponding airspace operations aspects to support scenario-based planning and requirements definition of highly integrated vehicle/airspace concepts, including investigations of the potential use of virtual/immersive simulations on future engineering decision making processes.
- Micro-scale wireless communications, health monitoring, energy harvesting and power-distribution technologies for large arrays of vehicle-embedded MEMS sensors and actuators.
- Miniaturized, robust sensor and/or diagnostic hardware for hypersonic vehicle applications, including in-stream, wall or nozzle flow measurements, suitable for subscale models in hypersonic wind tunnels and on subscale/full-size hypervelocity flight vehicles. Parameters of interest include temperature time histories (70< T < 3000 deg. F), heat flux, pressures, forces and moments (1 < q <1500 psf), skin-friction, species composition, velocity components and turbulent flow quantities.
- Test case management including requirements/test case traceability, test case generation, software risk assessment methods including reliability growth model or failure mode analysis, and model-based reasoning over early life-cycle artifacts including Unified Modeling Language (UML), lightweight formal methods, and traceability analysis.
- Static analysis, model checking, and runtime verification of adaptive systems.
- Learning algorithms to determine how effective the learner is given environment changes. Relevant technologies include convergence studies, novelty detection, and temporal data mining.
- Guidance and control for fail-safe adaptivity under adverse and upset conditions, including integrated flight/structural/propulsion control, and/or for highly nonlinear and/or distributed systems. Relevant technologies and methods include detection, identification, and prediction of adverse and upset conditions, flight critical computer systems technologies that provide fail-safe operation, and analytical, simulation-based, and experimental validation methods for adaptive flight systems technologies.
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A7.02 Revolutionary Flight Concepts
Lead Center: DFRC
This subtopic solicits innovative flight test experiments that demonstrate breakthrough vehicle or system concepts, technologies, and operations in the real flight environment. The emphasis of this subtopic is the feasibility, development, and maturation of advanced flight experiments that demonstrate advanced or revolutionary methodologies, technologies, and concepts. It seeks advanced flight techniques, operations, and experiments that promise significant leaps in vehicle performance, operation, safety, cost, and capabil- ity; and require a demonstration in the actual flight environment to fully characterize or validate.
The scope of this subtopic is broad and includes advanced flight experiments that accelerate the under-standing and development of advanced technologies and unconventional operational concepts. Examples extend to (but are not limited to) such things as inflatable aerostructures (new designs or innovative appli-cations, new manufacturing methods, new materials, new in-flight inflation methods, new methods for analysis of inflation dynamics), innovative control surface effectors (micro surfaces, embedded boundary layer control effectors, microactuators), innovative engine designs for UAV aircraft, innovative approaches to structures, stability, control, and aerodynamics integration schemes, and innovative approaches to incor-poration of UAV operations into commercial airspace. This subtopic is intended to advance and demonstrate revolutionary concepts and is not intended to support evolutionary steps required in normal product development. Proposals should emphasize the need of flight testing a concept or technology as a necessary means of verifying or proving its worth. The benefit of this effort will ultimately be more efficient aerospace vehicles, increased flight safety (particularly during flight tests), and an increased understanding of the complex interactions between the vehicle or technology concept and the flight environment.
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A7.03 Advanced Flight Platforms for Planetary Sciences
Lead Center: LaRC
This subtopic will focus on advanced atmospheric flight system technologies and the integration of these technologies into complete flight platforms to enable future science missions at Earth and other planets. The emphasis of this subtopic is on vehicle systems (rather than vehicle aerodynamics and aeroheating covered under A7.01) and the conception and development of new flight platforms to meet the needs of emerging planetary science objectives.
Advanced flight platforms
- Innovative vehicle configurations (geometry, materials, instrument integration, deployable components)
- Power management and energy storage (solar power, high-energy batteries, compact fuel cells)
- Precision orientation control systems (accurate positioning and feedback of vehicle’s spatial attitude)
- Technologies and systems to enable long-duration flight
- Propulsion systems (electric propulsion, advanced motor technologies)
- Robust vehicle systems (high reliability and high resiliency)
- System integration and performance (prototyping, testing, flight demonstration)
Advanced science instruments and sensors (ground sensing, atmospheric analysis, astrophysics)
- Small, low-mass instrument technologies (miniaturized multi-purpose sensors)
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