NASA SBIR 2007 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 - 6503
(781) 933-5355

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Jovan D Boskovic
jovan@ssci.com
500 W. Cummings Park
Woburn, MA 01801 - 6503
(781) 933-5355

Expected Technology Readiness Level (TRL) upon completion of contract: 2 to 3

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (Limit 2000 characters, approximately 200 words)
The main objective of this project is to develop and test a novel innovative Integrated Reconfigurable Aero & Propulsion Control (IRAP) system that achieves flight safety improvement in commercial aircraft. The main feature of the proposed IRAP system is that it is well suited for uncertain plants containing actuators operating on different time scales. The focus under this project is on the flight control system design for aircraft with fast actuators moving the flight control surfaces, and engines characterized by a slower response. The IRAP system will be developed for operation under faults, failures, damage and other upsets. The technique that will be used to achieve the related reconfigurable control objectives is referred to as the Sequential Signal Filtering for Certainty-Equivalence Adaptive Control (SSF-CEAC). Specific Phase I tasks include: (i) Problem formulation; (i) Adaptive control design for the case of aero-only control; (ii) Adaptive control design for the case of propulsion-only control; (iii) Integrated reconfigurable aero & propulsion control design; and (iv) Performance evaluation of the IRAP system. In collaboration with Boeing Phantom Works, in Phase II we plan to pursue extensions of the proposed approach to MIMO nonlinear models, further development of control allocation strategies, pilot interface design, integrated adaptive control design for safe landing under severe failures and damage using engines only, and IRAP software toolbox development.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
One of the important problems under the NASA Flight Safety Program and one of the main goals of Integrated Resilient Aircraft Control (IRAC) component is to provide aircraft stability, maneuverability, and safe landing in the presence of adverse conditions. The proposed IRAP system addresses all three features by assuring aircraft stability under severe flight-critical faults, failures and damage, minimizing the effect of the failures on the flight control system, and assuring safe landing under upsets and external hazards. Hence the proposed work is expected to have important impact on safety improvements for aerospace vehicles arising within the framework of the NGATS and Space
Exploration systems.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
Non-NASA applications include Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) that are also characterized by fast flight control actuators and slow engines, commercial space vehicles, and other vehicle systems whose actuators operate on different time scales.

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

Guidance, Navigation, and Control