AACUS

Aurora Flight Sciences, April 17, 2014 - 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.

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