Location: MK 317

Title: Enabling Technologies for Autonomous Landing with Robotic Landing Gear

Abstract:

Runways or prepared landing sites are not always available for vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft, such as rotorcraft. Unprepared or moving surfaces encompass situations that result in the rotorcraft coming to rest outside of its ideal roll and pitch specifications. Research and development into robotic landing gear (RLG) for rotorcraft provided a tool for these aircraft to land on completely unprepared surfaces by articulating the gear until it conforms to the surface below the aircraft. This work proposes the development of two RLG technology contributions for autonomous rotorcraft landings on static or moving surfaces using RLG. Namely, these two technologies are a low force large deformation force sensor form ground contact sensing and a discrete, real-time sensor fused RLG controller. These technologies will be transformative from previous RLG research because of their ability to increase autonomy, reliability, and applicability for fielded VTOL systems. Each technology is developed generally from first principles and applied to a crashworthy, cable-driven four-bar mechanism RLG on a commercial airframe. Simulations are then used to improve each technology’s design for the specific application, and experiments are conducted to show their performance and benefits. A series of ground and flight tests on the commercial airframe are proposed to support each technology’s contribution to autonomous, robust, and practical RLG.

Committee members:

Dr. Claudio V. Di Leo, Advisor

School of Aerospace Engineering

Georgia Institute of Technology

Dr. Ashish Bagai

buGi Aero, LLC

Dr. Julian J. Rimoli

School of Aerospace Engineering

Georgia Institute of Technology

Dr. Jonathan Rogers

School of Aerospace Engineering

Georgia Institute of Technology

Dr. William Singhose

School of Mechanical Engineering

Georgia Institute of Technology