NASA STTR 2010 Solicitation

SMALL BUSINESS CONCERN (SBC):		RESEARCH INSTITUTION (RI):
NAME:	Tao of Systems Integration, Inc.	NAME:	Regents of the University of Minnesota
STREET:	144 Research Drive	STREET:	450 McNamara Alumni Center, 200 Oak Street SE
CITY:	Hampton	CITY:	Minneapolis
STATE/ZIP:	VA  23666 - 1339	STATE/ZIP:	MN  55455 - 2070
PHONE:	(757) 220-5050	PHONE:	(612) 624-5599

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Arun Mangalam
arun@taosystems.us
144 Research Drive
Hampton, VA 23666 - 1339
(757) 220-5040

Estimated Technology Readiness Level (TRL) at beginning and end of contract:
Begin: 1
End: 3

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (Limit 2000 characters, approximately 200 words)
New aircraft designs depend on an integrated active approach to flight control, flutter suppression and structural mode attenuation to meet desired handling quality performance and gust load alleviation. Tao Systems will team with Professor Gary Balas at the University of Minnesota to (1) develop a robust controller that demonstrates improved aerostructural performance over the state-of-the-art by utilizing a novel aerodynamic load sensor, and (2) provide a robust linear parameter varying controller that (a) requires no ad hoc methods of gain-scheduling, (b) provides robustness guarantees that more traditional methods do not offer, and (c) allows for explicit rate bounds enabling less conservative, higher performing controller designs. The benefits include improvement of aerodynamic and structural efficiency using robust aeroservoelastic control methods over a range of flight speeds, in the presence of significant turbulence.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
The combination of robust control and accurate real-time aerodynamic load/moment sensors will enable a number of revolutionary capabilities across a wide speed range, including, but not limited to: (1) shorter take-off and landing, (2) safe, reliable supersonic operation, and (3) larger passenger and cargo capacity. The primary difficulty in all three revolutionary capabilities is the uncertainty in aerodynamic load \& moments generated by the airstream in design and off-design conditions, e.g., turbulent flows and high angles of attack. Measuring the aerodynamic loads/moments reduces the aerodynamic uncertainty enabling the aircraft to timely, robustly compensate for the adverse flow conditions, and utilizing a robust control methodology will provide guarantees otherwise not available. Therefore, the proposed innovation could be of significant interest to the aircraft civilian industry.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
For national security, the ability to cruise efficiently at a range of altitude, enabled by a substantial increase in cruise lift-to-drag (L/D) ratios over today's high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft, is vital, providing sustained presence and long range. Robust control utilizing aerodynamic load/moment sensors would enable the efficient, robust active control of adaptive, lightweight wings to optimize lift distribution to maximize L/D. Cost-effectively, robustly improving the energy capture and reliability of wind turbines would help national renewable energy initiatives. A standalone aerodynamic load/moment sensor could provide output for robust control feedback to mitigate the turbine blade lifetime-limiting time varying loads generated by the ambient wind.

TECHNOLOGY TAXONOMY MAPPING (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.)

Actuators & Motors Aerodynamics Air Transportation & Safety Algorithms/Control Software & Systems (see also Autonomous Systems) Analytical Instruments (Solid, Liquid, Gas, Plasma, Energy; see also Sensors) Analytical Methods Attitude Determination & Control Autonomous Control (see also Control & Monitoring) Avionics (see also Control and Monitoring) Characterization Circuits (including ICs; for specific applications, see e.g., Communications, Networking & Signal Transport; Control & Monitoring, Sensors) Command & Control Condition Monitoring (see also Sensors) Data Acquisition (see also Sensors) Data Modeling (see also Testing & Evaluation) Data Processing Diagnostics/Prognostics Generation Inertial Intelligence Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) and smaller Models & Simulations (see also Testing & Evaluation) Positioning (Attitude Determination, Location X-Y-Z) Recovery (see also Autonomous Systems) Recovery (see also Vehicle Health Management) Sequencing & Scheduling Simulation & Modeling Software Tools (Analysis, Design) Structures Support Thermal Vehicles (see also Autonomous Systems)