Lisa Papautsky’s scientific contributions

The growing interest of rotary wing UAVs, for military and civilian applications, has encouraged designers to consider miniaturized configurations, more efficient in terms of endurance, payload capability and maneuverability. The purpose of this paper is to study a new configuration of coaxial rotor as applied to a micro aerial vehicle (MAV) with the intention to guarantee the vehicle maneuverability while removing unnecessary control surfaces which would increase wind gust sensitivity. Coaxial rotor configurations maximize the available rotor disk surface and allow for torque cancelation. Tilting rotors may allow for the vehicle control.

This paper describes the Tactical Autonomous Aerial LOgistics System (TALOS), developed and flight tested during the first phase of the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Autonomous Aerial Cargo/Utility System (AACUS) Innovative Naval Prototype (INP) program. The ONR vision for AACUS is to create a retrofit perception/planning/human interface system that enables autonomous take-off, flight, and landing of a full-scale rotary-wing aircraft to and from austere, possibly-hostile landing zones, in a tactical manner, with minimal human supervision. The goal of the AACUS system is to enable any Marine to supervise this capability from an intuitive field interface (e.g. a smart phone, tablet, or military radio/interface). A key feature of the TALOS team's realization of the AACUS goal is its portability to any rotorcraft of sufficient payload capacity. It uses mostly-COTS hardware and next-generation autonomy software, and employs modular, open interfaces, so that (1) new software and hardware components can be integrated relatively easily and (2) perception, planning, and human interface capabilities are "transition-able" to other applications and aircraft. This paper gives an overview of the system architecture, the interaction between the TALOS components, and the demonstration results.