Research Fellowship Opportunity: Guidance & Control

Avian flight is a technologically compelling example of an aerodynamic body that adapts to the environment and functions through shape change (morphing). Although servo-controlled examples of morphing aircraft have existed for decades, emerging advances in material science and smart materials technologies pave the way for continuous shape change capabilities at high rates and under significant loads. In anticipation of the next generation of shape-change enabling materials, future extreme-agility high-speed unmanned air systems are envisioned that morph to meet mission requirements best or to operate in changing environments. Practical guidance and control (G&C) laws that orchestrate morphing actions are fundamental to achieving this vision. This research opportunity focuses on developing G&C methodologies that enable the morphing systems described above. We are particularly interested in furthering the knowledge base in G&C theory to

(1) create practical G&C methods for morphing aircraft,

(2) create synergies between the G&C systems with morphing action,

(3) automatically adapt to multiple flight phases with opposed aerodynamic requirements,

(4) automatically adapt to changing atmospheric or low altitude terrestrial environments,

(5) apply morphing actions to assist fin-based control system steering objectives,

(6) enhance target identification and interception,

(7) identify limitations of G&C measurement instrumentation for observability of morphing state, and

(8) leverage novel SWaP-C systems that enable morphing observability.

Ideas employing biologically inspired principles are welcome but must be scalable to platforms that operate over a wide range of dynamic pressures. Platforms of particular interest are endo-atmospheric unmanned aircraft or homing missiles with Mach numbers up to 4.0.