Description: The objective of this SBIR Phase I project is to develop and demonstrate a low cost, lightweight, miniaturized Integrated Collision Avoidance Enhanced GN&C System for Smart Air Vehicles. The proposed system takes advantage of the latest Commercial-Off-the-Shelf (COTS) components, American GNC Corporation's products and patents to achieve an integrated, guidance, navigation, and control (GN&C) micro system for air vehicles, which is capable of assisting aircraft pilots to avoid approach and collision with ground/water and other near objects in flight. The various data from the IMU, GPS chipset, terrain data base, magnetometer, and object detection sensors are processed to produce collision warning audio/visual messages and collision avoidance guidance commands in a closed-loop system. In this Phase I project, the feasibility, as well as functions, specifications, hardware architecture, algorithms and software of the proposed system will be investigated, simulated, and demonstrated.

Benefits: In addition to the potential applications for NASA's Enabling Concepts and Technologies program, the proposed GN&C system is also well-suited?due to its small size, low cost, and light weight?to a wide range of NASA systems, including: remote sensing platforms, extravehicular robotic systems, telerobotics, and UAVs. The product developed in this project, Integrated Collision Avoidance Enhanced GN&C System is applicable to several commercial applications including Air Traffic Management (ATM), smart vehicles, and intelligent transportation systems.