DARPA - Organic Air Vehicle-II (OAV-II)

Challenge: The Organic Air Vehicle-II (OAV-II) program is part of the U.S. Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS) program comprised of multiple classes of unmanned aircraft to accommodate multiple military missions. The OAV is designed to support small Army groups conducting tactical missions.

The OAVs and their ducted fan configurations present unique engineering challenges from a performance standpoint. Designed to be used by combat groups to conduct surveillance and reconnaissance around buildings in urban areas or over hills in rural areas, the aircraft will provide a critical function to the Army and other branches of the DoD in the future.

DARPA announced Phase I of the OAV-II program with the goal of developing a company-level ducted fan UAS for diverse missions, such as path finding for manned and unmanned ground vehicles, surveillance and reconnaissance, maneuvering for force protection, and targeting for non-line-of-site firing operations. Collision avoidance is a critical requirement of the OAV program. As a sub-contractor, Athena Technologies, now Rockwell Collins, was tapped to provide the flight controls for Aurora's ducted fan GoldenEye OAV-II.

Solution: We have implemented autonomous flight operations for several OAV concepts with our miniaturized flight control system and patented Feedback LTI'zation control design technology and process. The Athena product is a compact and robust system offering unique high-performance over the entire flight envelope. It also provides 3-D auto-navigation and takeoff and landing performed autonomously or commanded from a ground station.

Results: As part of the OAV-II program, we enabled the Aurora ducted fan Golden-Eye OAV-II in test flights to autonomously take off, navigate, maneuver around obstacles and land on an identified target.