SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif., Sept. 17 (UPI) -- AeroMech Engineering Inc. has a new award to help the U.S. Air Force in development of sense-and-avoid systems for unmanned aerial vehicles.
The four-year award, through the Air Force Research Laboratory, is valued at nearly $2.4 million.
Virginia's Barron Associates is prime contractor on AFRL's Multi-Vehicle Unmanned Aircraft Systems Sense and Avoid program initiated to address the risk of unmanned aerial vehicle collisions with manned aircraft.
"The key to our approach is testing, evaluating, and demonstrating the developed technologies with actual UAS formations -- not just simulations," said Jay McConville, president and chief executive officer of AME. "Our portfolio of highly capable but low-cost aircraft, including the Fury UAS, combined with our easily customizable Flight Control Augmentation System autopilot, will provide prime contractor Barron Associates with an excellent test and evaluation capability."
AME said the program, leveraging current AFRL sense-and-avoid development, will consist of integrating multi-vehicle coordination and formation flight strategies, or algorithms, with current state-of-the-art, sense-and-detect technologies provided by Barron Associates into the AME's FCAS autopilot.
AME will then execute a series of flight tests demonstrating coordinated control of a multi-UAV system with the developed technologies.
