Athena Technologies, Inc., has announced autonomous flight operations of several organic air vehicle concepts controlled by the company’s miniaturized flight control system.
The Warrenton, Va.-based developer of the GuideStar line of integrated flight control systems (FCS) based upon proprietary dynamics and control technology is believed to be the first company to successfully demonstrate the technology across multiple OAV platforms appropriate to support DARPA’s Organic Air Vehicle program.
Athena has successfully flown a wide array of UAVs including a number of autonomous ducted fan unmanned vehicles using the GuideStar incorporating Athena’s patented Feedback LTI’zation control technologies.
“These types of unmanned vehicles fall in the class of organic air vehicles suitable for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) original OAV program of 2001 and soon-to-be-launched OAV-II program with the recently announced industry day,” said Dr. David W. Vos, CTO/CEO and Founder of Athena.
“We believe our proven GuideStar FCS solution and flight experience in the OAV arena is unmatched in the industry,” said Dr. Vos. “The GuideStar very successfully controlled the OAVs in fully autonomous flight from take off to touchdown, including the full envelope from hover through high speed flight.
These accomplishments, enabled by our affordable COTS GuideStar FCS, position us well to provide integrated navigation, guidance and control solutions to the UAV community developing the class of vehicles to meet the overall operational requirements of the OAV program.”
The GuideStar product line provides an advanced, miniaturized flight control system suited for guidance and control of high performance fixed wing, ducted fan, and helicopter unmanned aerial vehicle applications.
It integrates a complete Inertial Navigation System (INS) with a Global Position System (GPS) solution, and incorporates state-of-the-art multi-input/output flight controls, air data, magnetometer and data logging capabilities.
GuideStar is a compact and robust system offering unique high-performance over the entire flight envelope and providing 3-D auto-navigation and auto- takeoff and landing performed autonomously or commanded from a ground station. GuideStar is also simple to install with external analog and digital interfaces to accommodate a variety of vehicle configurations in a high vibration installation environment.
In addition to proven flight experience on unmanned vehicles such as Shadow 200 for the Tactical UAV program, Athena has also demonstrated GuideStar’s success on nonlinear aerodynamic designs, such as the ducted fan OAV. “This concept offered some unique engineering challenges,” emphasized Vos, “Nevertheless, GuideStar performed flawlessly and demonstrated its utility for the OAV market.”
