MANASSAS, Va.---Athena Technologies has been awarded a Phase II contract from the Defense Advanced Projects Agency (DARPA) under the U.S. Government's Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program to develop micro air vehicle (MAV) navigation and guidance capabilities. Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute (Pittsburg, PA) and LightWorks, LLC (Berthoud, CO) are Athena's team members on the project.
Athena's innovation is a vehicle management system that uses micro- mechanical gyroscopes, GPS satellite signals, and a unique optical tracking system. During Phase I, the Athena team demonstrated the feasibility of using panospheric camera technology for navigation and guidance. During the twenty- two month Phase II effort, the team will apply this research to panoramic imaging, processing, and range sensing technologies on hovering and fixed-wing configurations in both indoor and outdoor environments.
"Micro air vehicles are a challenge under the best of circumstances due to their small size,'' said Dr. Ben Motazed, Principal Investigator for the project. "Outdoors, they can use signals from the GPS system for navigation. Flying indoors, however, you don't even have GPS. Our system enables the development of small aircraft that can navigate using visual patterns.''
Athena is an independent, privately held company headquartered in Manassas, Virginia. It was spun off in 1998 from Aurora Flight Sciences Corporation with the specific goal of commercializing fault-tolerant control technology originally developed for Aurora's high-altitude unmanned air vehicles (UAVs).
