The Flying Gator is an unmanned aerial vehicle developed to support investigations regarding concurrent and parallel control for robotic and embedded systems. During ten weeks in the summer of 2010, we designed, built, and tested an airframe, control electronics, and a concurrent firmware capable of sustaining autonomous level flight. Ultimately, we hope to have a robust, open source control sy...

The 2001 Volpe National Transportation Systems Center report on GPS vulnerabilities identified Loran-C as one possible backup system for GPS. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) observed in its recently completed Navigation and Landing Transition Study that Loran-C, as an independent radio navigation system, is theoretically the best backup for GPS; however, this study also observed that ...

As aircraft continue to increase their power and thermal demands, transient operation of the power and propulsion subsystems can no longer be neglected at the aircraft system level. The performance of the whole aircraft must be considered by examining the dynamic interactions between the power, propulsion, and airframe subsystems. Larger loading demands placed on the power and propulsion subsys...

A self-designing flight control system (SDFCS) could provide a cost-effective means for developing controllers for new aircraft by eliminating analyst-intensive design of numerous individual controllers, each optimized for a single flight condition. Additionally, the SDFCS could improve the capabilities of existing aircraft by enhancing control performance in new flight regimes such as high ang...