CACI boosts spending on independent research and development

Sur le même sujet

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  31 mai 2019 | International, Aérospatial

  French Military Launches Development Of Future Joint Light Helicopter

  Program Based On Airbus Helicopters H160 Brought Forward To 2021 The French Minister of the Armed Forces, Florence Parly, has announced that the launch of the Joint Light Helicopter (Hélicoptère Interarmées Léger; HIL) program has been brought forward to 2021. The HIL program, for which the Airbus Helicopters' H160 was selected in 2017, was initially scheduled for launch in 2022 by the current military budget law. Launching the program earlier will enable delivery of the first H160Ms to the French Armed Forces to be advanced to 2026. During a visit to the Airbus Helicopters headquarters, the Minister also revealed the full-scale mock-up of the H160M that will be presented on the Ministry of the Armed Forces stand at the next Paris Air Show. The helicopter was also given its official name and will be designated as “Guépard” (“Cheetah”) by the French Armed Forces. The H160 was designed to be a modular helicopter, enabling its military version, with a single platform, to perform missions ranging from commando infiltration to air intercept, fire support, and anti-ship warfare in order to meet the needs of the army, the navy and the air force through the HIL program. “We are proud that the HIL is considered a strategic program. I would like to thank the Ministry, the French Defence Procurement Agency DGA and the armed forces for their trust and for the close collaboration which helped create the conditions for the program to be brought forward within the framework of the current military budget law. This will make it possible to speed up the replacement of the older generation of aircraft, while optimising the support and availability of the French State's helicopter fleet,” said Bruno Even, CEO of Airbus Helicopters. “Our teams are committed to delivering an aircraft in 2026 that meets the needs of the French armed forces in terms of availability, performance and capability, thus enabling it to rapidly become the new benchmark on the world's medium-lift military helicopter market.” Built around a platform that will enter service next year, the HIL program will benefit from many of the advantages inherent in the civil H160, particularly in terms of support, with simplified maintenance and lower operating costs than the previous generation of helicopters in this category. http://www.aero-news.net/index.cfm?do=main.textpost&id=5c30e0d6-3111-42dc-a6fa-63252c17dd58

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  24 septembre 2023 | International, Aérospatial

  Italy says it will be equal partner in jet fighter project with UK, Japan | Reuters

  Italy said on Saturday it will be an equal partner in the next-generation fighter program with Britain and Japan, as further talks are still underway on the project, including on where to base its headquarters.

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  28 février 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Terrestre

  Robots Autonomously Navigate Underground in DARPA Challenge

  Whether robots are exploring caves on other planets or disaster areas here on Earth, autonomy enables them to navigate extreme environments without human guidance or access to GPS. The Subterranean Challenge, or SubT, is testing this kind of cutting-edge technology. Sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the contest concluded its second circuit on Wednesday, Feb. 27. Taking first in the competition was CoSTAR, a 12-robot, 60-person team led by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (there were also winners declared for a separate, virtual competition). SubT is divided into four circuits spread over three years. With each, teams program their robots to navigate a complex underground course. The first contest, held last August, took place in a mine. For the most recent, called the Urban Circuit, teams raced against one another in an unfinished power plant in Elma, Washington. Each team's robots searched for a set of 20 predetermined objects, earning a point for each find. For the Urban Circuit, CoSTAR earned 16 points; the No. 2 team, with 11 points, was Explorer, led by Carnegie Mellon University. "The goal is to develop software for our robots that lets them decide how to proceed as they face new surprises," said CoSTAR's team lead Ali Agha of JPL. "These robots are highly autonomous and for the most part make decisions without human intervention." CoSTAR, which stands for Collaborative SubTerranean Autonomous Robots, brought machines that can roll, walk or fly, depending on what they encounter. Along the way, the bots have to map the environment and find objects like a warm mannequin that simulates a disaster survivor or a lost cellphone with a Wi-Fi signal. This particular course, which aims to simulate an urban environment, also included a carbon dioxide leak and a warm air vent. Joining the team for the Urban Circuit was a four-legged robot called Spot, which was provided by Boston Dynamics. "One of the two courses we had to run had multiple levels, so it was great that the Boston Dynamics robots were fantastic on stairs," says Joel Burdick, a Caltech professor and JPL research scientist. He is the leader of the Caltech campus section of the CoSTAR team. As the bots explore, they send back video and digital maps to a single human supervisor, who they remained in radio contact with for the first 100 feet (30 meters) or so of the course. They can extend that range by dropping communications nodes, a kind of wireless repeater. Once out of contact, it's up to each robot to decide whether to proceed or backtrack in order to update the team. Each must also rely on fellow robots to access different levels of the course. For example, a wheeled robot might request a quadrupedal one to climb or descend a flight of stairs. "These courses are very, very challenging, and most of the difficulty lies in communicating with the robots after they've gone out of range," Agha said. "That's critical for NASA: We want to send robots into caves on the Moon or Mars, where they have to explore on their own." Mapping caves on the Moon or Mars could identify good shelters for future astronauts. Moreover, if it exists at all, microbial life has a better chance of survival under the surface of Mars or within the icy seas of planetary moons, like Europa, Enceladus and Titan. NASA wants to search for life in these regions, where robots would be frequently out of contact. The next circuit in the Subterranean Challenge will be set in an undisclosed natural cave network this August. A final circuit that blends tunnels, urban environments and natural caves will take place in August of 2021. Teams competing in that final event have the opportunity to win up to $2 million in funding from DARPA. CoSTAR, includes JPL; Caltech, which manages JPL for NASA; MIT; KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology); Sweden's Lulea University of Technology; and industry partners. News Media Contact Andrew Good Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 818-393-2433 andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov 2020-041 https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2020-041&rn=news.xml&rst=7607