SBIR/STTR Award attributes
The ResilienX team is proposing to develop a technology package to holistically monitor the many aspects of health and integrity of unmanned aircraft systems including: Structural components (strain, stress, pressure, fatigue) Mechanical components (temperature, vibration, position) Electrical components (current, voltage) Cyber components (latency, security, resource utilization) Cyber-physical components (liveliness, performance, data integrity) Our vision is to fuse the output of this multi-modal, multi-channel monitoring to enable our artificial intelligence algorithms to assess the impact to flight time and operational capability due to any faults, failures, or degradations that may occur. We will use embedded, networked sensing methods to lower power consumption and footprint while enabling real-time data capture and processing. This will enable safety assurance of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) operations for our commercial and DoD customers, as well as feeding digital logistics systems for efficient prognostics and preventative maintenance. ResilienX has emerged as a leader in the domain of In-time System-wide Safety Assurance (ISSA). In the 8 months since initial product completion our product has been funded by NASA, FAA, Ohio Federal Research Network (OFRN), and the US Navy. For this effort, ResilienX has teamed with the University of North Texas (UNT) at Denton, a tier one research institution with a depth of expertise in the fields of self-monitoring multi-materials and surface acoustic wave (SAW) sensors. ResilienX has brought Luna Innovations (Luna) in as a subcontractor to take advantage of their deep experience in embedded Conditions Based Monitoring (eCBM) sensors, which are in use by both the Air Force and Navy. Additionally, Bell Flight has agreed to come on in an advisory role for Phase I/II and will be a commercialization partner in Phase III. The ResilienX FRAIHMWORKTM (Fault Recovery and Isolation, Health Monitoring frameWORK) software is integrating into our customer’s UAS ecosystems including the Ohio Department of Transportation (DOT) Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Traffic Management (UTM) program, the New York UAS Test Site UTM Corridor, and the AFRL SkyVision Ground Based Detect and Avoid (GBDAA) System. FRAIHMWORK will be adapted to be embedded on-board a UAS platform, to be fed by embedded sensing technology developed by UNT and Luna, and relay impact analysis information to the external ecosystem (UTM, ATC, etc.). We plan to productize the technology as a package to license or sell to both large "Orb” and smaller professional-grade UAS manufacturers. Our technology benefits these OEMs by enabling monitoring, assessment, and mitigation of onboard vehicle health issues, resulting in increased system robustness and resiliency. Our technology provides value to the ecosystems these UAS operate in by enabling real-time communications of issues which may affect operations, enabling effective contingency management.