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Product Overview
An autonomous helicopter program designed to give a Marine on the ground the ability to request a supply delivery via helicopter, which flies to their location with minimal human assistance and autonomously land in an austere, possibly hostile landing zone. Upon delivery, the helicopter will autonomously return to its origin or proceed to another delivery point.
The program focuses on making the operation of the system by the Marine in the field extremely intuitive, requiring no advanced training to operate the system. The AACUS-enabled helicopter is fitted with onboard lidar-based sensors that enable it to detect and avoid obstacles and evaluate the landing zone and onboard mission, route, and path planning capabilities to execute missions.
Potential Applications
Oil and Gas: Improve safety of movement of cargo and crews to/from offshore oil platforms
Air Medical: Provide aircrews enhanced situational awareness and path planning
Fire Fighting: Detect heat signatures for precise deployment of fire retardant
Business Aviation: Apply to business fixed wing and rotor aircraft to improve safety
Agriculture: Aerial application of pesticides and fertilizers
Capabilities & Benefits
Autonomously conduct a mission in its entirety
Land in an unimproved, un-surveyed landing zone
Operate minimal human supervision
User-friendly and easy to learn application for the field operator
Portable across multiple rotary-wing aircraft