NASA SBIR 2005 Solicitation

SMALL BUSINESS CONCERN (Firm Name, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Scientific Systems Company, Inc.
500 West Cummings Park, Suite 3000
Woburn, MA 01801-6580
(781) 933-5355

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Raman   Mehra
rkm@ssci.com
500 West Cummings Park, Suite 3000
Woburn, MA  01801-6580
(781) 933-5355

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (Limit 2000 characters, approximately 200 words)
SSCI proposes to further develop, implement and test the damage-adaptive control algorithms developed in Phase I within the framework of an Integrated Damage Modeling & Adaptive Control (IDMAC) system. The proposed IDMAC system design will be based on the following: (i) Development of a coupled structural and aerodynamic model of aircraft dynamics under structural damage, (ii) Generation of a set of models describing different damage cases; (iii) Model set reduction to arrive at a reduced set of control design models; and (iv) Use of the reduced model set to design
multiple-model stochastic damage estimators and corresponding reconfigurable controllers to stabilize the aircraft and achieve acceptable performance of the closed-loop flight control system. The proposed IDMAC system will be tested on transport aircraft models selected in consultation with NASA Langley.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
Due to increasing terrorist threats, in the recent years there has been a lot of interest in the development of effective adaptive reconfigurable control systems that can compensate for the damage in commercial aircraft caused by man-portable air defense systems (ManPADS), and NASA added this aspect of the fault-tolerant control problem to the existing Aviation
Safety program. The proposed IDMAC system will be an important contribution to addressing the goals of this program. Technology that will be developed in Phase II has direct applications in the NASA Space Exploration programs
where higher level of autonomy, including autonomous damage accommodation, will be required due to limited ground support.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
Potential non-NASA applications of the IDMAC system are in the area of commercial and military aircraft. Autonomous IDMAC will also find wide applications in other programs such as spacecraft control and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV).

NASA's technology taxonomy has been developed by the SBIR-STTR program to disseminate awareness of proposed and awarded R/R&D in the agency. It is a listing of over 100 technologies, sorted into broad categories, of interest to NASA.

TECHNOLOGY TAXONOMY MAPPING

Airframe Autonomous Control and Monitoring Autonomous Reasoning/Artificial Intelligence Controls-Structures Interaction (CSI) Guidance, Navigation, and Control Pilot Support Systems Simulation Modeling Environment Software Development Environments Structural Modeling and Tools