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Certification of Complex, Non-Deterministic Systems

Principal Investigator: Dr. Craig Woolsey

This task focused on methods for quantifying uncertainty in risk assessment, risk mitigation, and safety certification of autonomous vehicles, using small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) as a representative application. Methods and tools are being developed to model unmanned aircraft systems, using a combination of experimental and computational data, to help facilitate the aircraft certification process. The current research focuses on developing methods to characterize the uncertainty in models and model-forms for modified aircraft configurations, which can avoid the need for additional flight testing. 

Aerostar UAV
Aerostar UAV in the nominal (unmodified) configuration used for flight testing at NAVAIR
Flight test and simulation data
Comparison of flight test data, in blue, and simulation data for the AeroStar UAS.