Application Briefs: Defense

Flight Management System Software

Thales
Paris La Défense Cedex, France
+33 (0)1 57 77 86 26
www.thalesgroup.com

Thales was recently selected by Northrop Grumman Corporation to have its state-of-the-art Flight Management...

Application Briefs: Defense

Embedded Computing Subsystems

GE Intelligent Platforms
Huntsville, AL
1-800-433-2682
www.geautomation.com

GE’s Intelligent Platforms division recently secured orders from General Dynamics UK valued at £64 million...

Application Briefs: Defense

Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT) Shipsets

McMurdo Group
Lanham, MD
240-790-0600
www.mcmurdogroup.com

McMurdo Group, a company that specializes in end-to-end search and rescue (SAR) and maritime domain awareness (MDA)...

Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping

Fabricating Transparent and Stretchable Supercapacitors Based on Wrinkled Graphene Electrodes

Stretchable electronic devices, including solar cells, light-emitting diodes, batteries, and textile supercapacitors, have been developed to retain...

Briefs: Defense

Modular Exhaust Design and Manufacturing Techniques for Build-to-Order Muffler Systems

Managing the acoustic signature of military vehicles can play a critical role in the safety of soldiers. Low-frequency sounds propagate through the...

Briefs: Aerospace

Silicon Microsphere Fabrication

The efficiency and methodology of coupling light into microcavities has improved exponentially in the last decade. One such advancement is coupling light onto silicon microspheres. The material, size, and...

Briefs: Aerospace

Designing and Fabricating a Multiple-Decade Battery

There is a great need for energy sources that can power unattended sensors for more than a decade. Unattended sensors can be located in harsh and remote locations that are often dangerous...

Technology Update: Defense

Altair Optimizes 3D-Printed Structures for Complex, Lightweight Designs

Altair expects to better support the use of additive manufacturing (AM), or 3D printing, by releasing new OptiStruct solver capabilities for topology optimization. The...

Technology Update: Defense

MTU Develops New Turbine Blade Material in Record Time

MTU Aero Engines announced in March that its internal experts and industry partners have jointly developed a new class of intermetallic, high-temperature materials for highly stressed...

INSIDER: Green Design & Manufacturing

Researchers Create Jet Fuel Compounds From Fungus

Washington State University researchers have found a way to make jet fuel from a common black fungus found in decaying leaves, soil, and rotting fruit. They used Aspergillus...

INSIDER: Aerospace

NASA Tests Green Aviation Technology

Two NASA experiments designed to help reduce fuel consumption and emissions will fly this spring on a specially outfitted Boeing 757 airplane called the ecoDemonstrator. One includes 31 small devices that...

INSIDER: Aerospace

Airflow Model Could Reduce Time on the Tarmac

New research could lead to more efficient takeoffs on airport runways and improve safety. A mathematical tool was developed to calculate the flow of turbulent air produced by a plane’s wing...

INSIDER: Defense

Researcher Develops Autonomous UAV Refueling System

A University of Sydney researcher has designed and successfully tested a method for autonomously docking drones for refueling or recharging, in mid- air. Daniel Wilson, whose PhD research...

INSIDER: Defense

Army Looks Toward Fully Autonomous Tactical Vehicle

The U.S. Army is working toward developing a fully autonomous tactical vehicle, a robotics expert said. "When you start looking at the mid-term, five to 10 years, we start talking about...

INSIDER: Defense

Laser-Based Aircraft Countermeasures Protect Against MANPADS

The Army expects to reach a Milestone B decision with its laser-based common infrared countermeasures, or CIRCM, defense system program later this year. The CIRCM system, under...

Articles: Defense

Deploying Next-Generation UAS Platforms with 3U VPX

More powerful. Lighter. Cooler. These are the key criteria for the design of Line Replaceable Units (LRUs) in next-generation Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) platforms, which continue to grow...

Articles: Unmanned Systems

UGVs — On the Cutting Edge of Thermal Management

Thermal management of unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) is more complex than other electronic equipment because they have to operate in harsh environments such as humid tropical rainforests or...

Articles: Imaging

Controlling the Seas: Introducing a New Concept in Autonomous Surface/Underwater Vehicles

The boundary between the sea and sky is an important place to be. It’s the critical connecting layer for commercial and military information exchange...

Articles: Unmanned Systems

Connectivity in Robotic Systems

While many think of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or space probes and planet rovers when they think of unmanned systems, the field of robotics covers every environment known to man: sea, ground, air, and...

Application Briefs: Defense

Anti-Hacking Software for UAVs

Galois
Portland, OR
503-626-6616
http://galois.com

To address growing evidence that commercial Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), automobiles and other vehicles are vulnerable to hacking and...

Application Briefs: Defense

Unmanned Naval Helicopter

Northrop Grumman Corporation
Redondo Beach, CA
310-812-4321
www.northropgrumman.com

The U.S. Navy has been conducting ship-board flight testing of the first operational MQ-8C Fire Scout unmanned...

Application Briefs: Defense

UAV Circuit Boards

Sunstone Circuits
Mulino, OR
503-829-9108
www.sunstone.com

Miki Szmuk is an aerospace engineer with big ideas for building better unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). As a doctoral student from the Controls...

Briefs: Defense

Infrared Stereo Calibration for Unmanned Ground Vehicle Navigation

Many challenges still persist in the area of autonomous (and even semi-autonomous) vehicle navigation for unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs). One challenge is in detecting and...

Briefs: Aerospace

Simultaneous Vibration Suppression and Energy Harvesting for a Multifunctional UAV Spar

The goal of this work was to investigate using harvested energy to directly control the vibration response of flexible aerospace systems. Small,...

Briefs: Defense

Development and Evaluation of the Stingray Amphibious Maritime Unmanned Ground Vehicle

Every year, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps conduct thousands of Maritime Interdiction Operations (MIOs) to enforce embargoes, intercept contraband,...

Briefs: Software

Pushbroom Stereo for High-Speed UAV Navigation in Cluttered Environments

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) rely on an external motion-capture apparatus that gives the vehicles almost perfect state information at high rates. Major challenges in...

Briefs: Defense

Modeling and Simulation of an Unmanned Ground Vehicle Power System

Robotic vehicles such as unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) have multiple sources of power, including batteries, fuel cells, combustion engines, ultracapacitors, and solar cells...

INSIDER: Aerospace

Rocket Science May Improve Kidney Dialysis

Researchers in the United Kingdom have found a way to redesign an artificial connection between an artery and vein, known as an Arterio-Venous Fistulae (AVF), that surgeons form in the arms of...