Session Category: HUB AVIATION 2023

Test your design and flight operations skills against the brightest minds in aviation. Fold and fly your own paper airplane versus experts and enthusiasts. Fly for fun! Earn bragging rights! Compete for prizes!

Hear about SDSU’s journey to 2023 Design/Build/Fly and the aircraft they designed and flew at the competition.

Learn about the future of aerial logistics with Elroy Air as they work to bring same-day shipping to every person on the planet. Their revolutionary Chaparral hybrid-electric VTOL UAS combines air and ground autonomy, enabling automated terminal navigation and cargo loading for rapid turnaround times with minimal human touch. With a cargo capacity of 300–500 lbs and mission range up to 300 miles, Elroy Air’s system will revolutionize commercial middle-mile logistics, humanitarian shipping, and military resupply. Join Elroy Air’s CEO Dave Merrill to hear about the transformative potential of the Chaparral UAS and explore the impacts of next-generation automated logistics.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are an increasing area of emphasis for the Department of Defense (DoD). In its 2022 budget the Pentagon requested $4.3 billion for AI/ML-related efforts, an over 50% jump in a two-year span. Unfortunately, much of the driving technology is being developed for commercial applications due to the relatively small size and challenges associated with the defense market. Common commercial assumptions like ample compute power, internet connectivity, and stable power are not valid in DoD applications due to deployment in what is referred to as the edge on low size, weight, and power (SWaP) platforms. Edge AI/ML refers to processing data and running algorithms on the deployed device rather than centrally. This concept allows AI/ML to run without connectivity, an important feature for military platforms that can experience degraded communication. In addition, DoD edge computing often happens in low SWaP environments due to mission and cost requirements. This can be challenging for commercially developed technology that often is designed to live in large data centers with access to ample compute resources. As a result, to make AI/ML technology deployable and tactically relevant, edge computing and low SWaP deployment problems need to be addressed. This presentation describes the process of deploying AI/ML models in low SWaP environments at the edge. Specifically, the talk looks at developing a vision-based automatic takeoff and landing deep learning system for a UAV. The presentation details the model development and optimization process for low SWaP deployment. In addition, it covers testing of the model using different deployment optimization strategies and the trade-offs associated with each. Ultimately, the presentation provides the community with an example of how to address a pressing problem associated with deploying AI/ML for military applications.

Flight safety has always been an issue in aviation, and will be one of the most sensitive aspects in urban air mobility. Safety will be one of the first hurdles to be overcome to get the new mobility off the ground, because flight safety — especially in UAM — means passenger safety and safety for those living in the cities that will be crossed by eVTOLs.

While many in the industry are concentrating on building flying taxis, batteries, and vertiports to land on, we at The Edge Company are focusing on the roads in the city skies: can we make them safe with our BCMS Ventur system that is already used in some airports? Non-cooperative obstacle detection based on computer vision and artificial intelligence seems to be the only one that currently offers the possibility of detecting obstacles, classifying them without any harmful emissions and without any problems due to the structure of the cities. The BCMS Ventur, thanks to the dynamic approach and the multidisciplinary team that developed it, is an obstacle detector that has a true positive rate of more than 95%, guarantees safe operations and contributes to the protection of local fauna (birds), as well as having no harmful emissions.

The Partnership to Enhance General Aviation Safety, Accessibility and Sustainability (PEGASAS) is an FAA Center of Excellence for General Aviation. The mission of PEGASAS is to enhance general aviation safety, accessibility, and sustainability by partnering the FAA with a national network of world-class researchers, educators, and industry leaders.

This discussion will focus on how the PEGASAS Center of Excellence for General Aviation can answer research questions for advanced air mobility.

The NASA Sustainable Flight National Partnership (SFNP) mission is to accelerate toward net-zero carbon emissions for our next-generation subsonic transports by 2050. Project managers supporting the SFNP mission will introduce their projects and provide insight as to how they became a NASA project manager, including sharing some of their technical and leadership challenges and opportunities.

SUAS/ALEs have become valuable military assets but have limitations on their endurance and range. Further, most currently are recovered via belly or skid landing, which is not possible for operations over blue water. Even when recovering on land, the ALE’s airframes and payloads are jeopardized. To remain affordable, they must utilize inexpensive sensors with limited performance. ALE Aerial Recovery will be a game changer: ALEs can be recovered over blue water and no longer will airframes and payloads be jeopardized. ALEs will be able to carry high performance sensors that will dramatically improve the ALE’s effectiveness. This presentation will show GA-ASI’s concept for SUAS/ALE aerial recovery, the mission cost benefit of SUAS/ALE aerial recovery, and our technical roadmap.

What if … you had a new propulsion technology that even at small thrust class could achieve an efficiency of >90%? And what if you realized that for the same total amount of power required, using 22 small electric motors is 4.7x lighter than using 1 big electric motor? And what if you realized that by using many small electric motors, the cube-square law made thermal cooling become a simple passive solution, instead of requiring complex active liquid cooling systems to remove the low grade heat of one big electric motor? How would you design an aircraft to leverage such radical changes to how propulsion systems scale? How would aircraft capabilities change as propulsion, aerodynamics, and acoustics were all combined into a single unified highly integrated solution?

Come see the future unveiled as Whisper Aero reveals the Whisper Jet. Join us at Booth 118