INSIDER

Aerospace

NASA Tests Prepare Space Launch System for Liftoff

NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) may experience ground wind gusts of up to 70 mph as it sits on the launch pad before and during liftoff for future missions. Understanding how...

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Sensors/Data Acquisition

Lightweight Artificial Hair Sensors Could Enable “Fly by Feel”

The Air Force Research Laboratory was inspired by the hairs on bats and crickets in creation of artificial hair sensors that could assess the external environment and change...

News

Defense

NASA to Establish New Space Technology Research Institutes

NASA has selected proposals for the creation of two multi-disciplinary, university-led research institutes that will focus on the development of technologies critical to extending...

News

Manufacturing & Prototyping

Incremental Improvements Can Lead to Huge Benefits for Aircraft Programs

Today, virtually all commercial aircraft possess sophisticated systems that contribute to a comfortable—not to mention safe and healthy—environment for passengers....

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Aerospace

Creating the Future: A Better Way to Map Terrain

Mark Skoog, an aerospace engineer at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center, led the development of new software that stores terrain data in a more efficient and accurate way. The achievement,...

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Software

AMRDEC Technologies to Improve Air and Missile Defense

Engineers at the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center (AMRDEC) are working on a trio of technologies to explore improving existing air and missile...

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Test & Measurement

Drop of Mock Nuclear Weapon Is First of New Flight Tests

From a distance, the drop of a mock nuclear weapon — containing only non-nuclear components — was a mere puff of dust rising from a dry lake bed at Nevada’s Tonopah Test Range....

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Photonics/Optics

Mobile High-Energy Laser Shoots Down Drones

A Stryker combat vehicle equipped with a 5kW laser and an array of sensors spent several minutes scanning the horizon for a wayward "enemy" drone. On a television screen in a nearby tent off...

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Data Acquisition

New System Assists X-Planes with Super-Fast Data Transmission

A network and communication architecture that can more efficiently move data from research aircraft, while using half the bandwidth of traditional methods, could eventually also...

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Green Design & Manufacturing

In-Flight, On-Demand Hydrogen Production for Greener Aircraft

The Technion-Israel Institute of Technology developed a process that can be used onboard aircraft while in flight to produce hydrogen from water (including wastewater on the plane)...

Briefs

Aerospace

Experimental Confirmation of an Aquatic Swimming Motion Theoretically of Very Low Drag and High Efficiency

It has been established theoretically that self-propulsion of deformable bodies in ideal fluid can occur with a careful specification of...

Briefs

Robotics, Automation & Control

Gesture-Based Controls for Robots: Overview and Implications for Use by Soldiers

Afuture vision of the use of autonomous and intelligent robots in dismounted military operations is for soldiers to interact with robots as teammates, much like...

Articles

Sensors/Data Acquisition

Fast-Tracking Autonomous Vehicles with Simulation

Artificial intelligence developments are set to fundamentally transform mobility, whether it is mobility of weapon payloads, supply deliveries, urban commuters, warehouse goods, delivery...

Products

Defense

New Products

Articles

Robotics, Automation & Control

Developing a Multi-Modal UGV Robot Control Interface

Unmanned ground vehicles (UGV) are currently being used or developed for operational maneuvers (e.g., reconnaissance and IED defeat), maneuver support (e.g., route clearance), and sustainment...

Briefs

Aerospace

A Guide for Developing Human-Robot Interaction Experiments in the Robotic Interactive Visualization and Experimentation Technology (RIVET) Simulation

ARL's Intelligent Systems Enterprise vision is to enable the teaming of autonomous intelligent...

Articles

Energy

Solar Powering UAVs

One of the largest problems facing the aerospace industry involves size, weight, and power (SWaP) analysis and the increasing size of payloads with typically a finite amount of power to drive ever more demanding systems....

Articles

Aerospace

Deploying COTS Subsystems in UUVs

In December, 2016 the newest class of unmanned vehicles, Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUV) made international headlines after China, in an unprecedented act, seized an unclassified “ocean glider” operated...

Briefs

Aerospace

Identifying the Flow Physics and Modeling Transient Forces on Two-Dimensional Wings

The main objective of this research was to better understand the flow physics of aircraft wings undergoing highly unsteady maneuvers. Reduced-order models play a central role in this study, both to elucidate the overall dynamical mechanisms behind various flow...

Briefs

Robotics, Automation & Control

The Scaling of Loss Pathways and Heat Transfer in Small Scale Internal Combustion Engines

The rapid expansion of the remotely piloted aircraft market includes an interest in 10 kg to 25 kg vehicles (Group 2) for monitoring, surveillance, and...

Articles

Unmanned Systems

Interoperability Standards Pave the Way for Modular Robotic Manipulators

Unmanned vehicles have long been used by the military to handle situations characterized by the three Ds: dull, dirty, and dangerous. As the use of unmanned ground...

News

Defense

Aurora Flight Sciences Partners with Uber in Contested Airspace

Uber announced in late April a partnership with Aurora Flight Sciences to develop electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft for its Uber Elevate Network....

INSIDER

Aerospace

How NASA Tracks the Asteroids Flying by Earth

On Wednesday, April 19, an asteroid missed Earth by 1.1 million miles – a distance closer than you might think. This week, Tech Briefs spoke with NASA’s Planetary Defense Officer about the...

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Motion Control

NASA Tests Robotic Ice Tools

Since 2015, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, has been developing new technologies for use on future missions to ocean worlds. That includes a subsurface probe that could burrow through...

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Robotics, Automation & Control

New Robotic System Finds and Destroys Explosive Threats

In combat, land mine and improvised explosive device (IED) clearance is a slow, painstaking, stressful job that physically and mentally drains soldiers and military working dogs....

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Aerospace

Swarms of Autonomous Aerial Vehicles Test New Dogfighting Skills

Aerial dogfighting began more than a century ago in the skies over Europe with propeller-driven fighter aircraft carried aloft on wings of fabric and wood. An event held...

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Aerospace

Morphing Wings Make Jets More Efficient

University of Michigan engineers have developed improved wing designs capable of burning less fuel, as well as tools that help the aerospace industry build more efficient aircraft. In areas where new...

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Aerospace

Heated Concrete Could Pave the Way for Ice-Free Runways

Iowa State University tested slabs of electrically conductive concrete at Des Moines International Airport. The test slabs are made up of 1 percent carbon fiber and a special mix of...