Vigilant Aerospace, Cimarron Capital Partners, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Armstrong Flight Research Center (NASA AFRC) are being honored by the Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) with the nation’s highest technology transfer recognition, the annual “Excellence in Technology Transfer” award.
The award recognizes the project to license and commercialize the technology behind FlightHorizon as one of the top technology transfer efforts in the nation. According to the FLC, the awards are ” …ranked as some of the most prestigious honors in the Technology Transfer (T2) field and are given as a symbol of well-deserved recognition for phenomenal technological efforts.”
The award will be given at the 2017 Federal Labs Consortium (FLC) National Meeting in April. This announcement comes after the project previously received the award for the
FLC Far West Region’s “Oustanding Commercialization Success” last fall.
Excellence in Technology Transfer
According to the FLC, “the Excellence in Technology Transfer Award is presented annually by the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer (FLC) to recognize laboratory employees and industry partners who have accomplished outstanding work in the process of transferring federally developed technology.”
NASA Developed Detect-and-Avoid Technology
The
patented NASA Sense-and-Avoid System with Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) Avionics for Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) is a set of
processes and algorithms built into software that uses aviation transponders to detect, track and avoid collisions between aircraft.
Developed by a team led by Dr. Ricardo Arteaga at the NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, CA, the system uses a combination of hardware and software to deliver air traffic visualization, alerts, collision warnings and avoidance commands to pilots and autopilots. The system improves air safety and is a key component in allowing unmanned aircraft to join manned aircraft in the national airspace.
The heart of the NASA system is an
advanced sense-and-avoid algorithm specifically designed for the short-term trajectories typically associated with UAS. When a collision risk is identified, the algorithm automatically begins finding the safest and most efficient solution to avoid the other aircraft and then instructs the pilot or autopilot to follow the new course.
If the aircraft posing the collision threat (the “intruder”) changes its flight path during this time, the algorithm automatically changes the avoidance commands, continually keeping the aircraft on a clear path. Once the risk has been avoided, the algorithm instructs the aircraft to return to its previous course.
Discovery and Technology Transfer
Recognizing the potential impact NASA’s technology could have on the aviation industry, Cimarron Capital Partners launched Vigilant Aerospace Systems to commercialize the innovation in late 2014.
NASA Armstrong and the
NASA Armstrong Technology Transfer team’s efforts to commercialize the technology were led by Chief Technology Transfer Officer Laura Fobel and Technology Transfer Specialist Janeya Griffin. The license application was announced in the Federal Register on September 23, 2015 and the license
was signed by Vigilant Aerospace CEO Kraettli L. Epperson on February 25, 2016.
The FLC describes Technology Transfer as “the process by which existing knowledge, facilities, or capabilities developed under federal R&D funding are utilized to fulfill public and private needs. Every year, billions of American taxpayer dollars go into funding research and development (R&D) at our federal laboratories, with the intent being for those innovations to return their investment and move from the laboratory to the marketplace, thereby boosting our economy.”
This technology is now part of the Vigilant Aerospace Systems’
FlightHorizon product suite, which provides synthetic cockpit views (i.e., simulations of the view from the cockpit of an unmanned aircraft), air traffic alerts, detect-and-avoid commands, air traffic control areas, weather data, and other functions that improve flight safety and situational awareness for all kinds of aircraft.
About the Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC)
The FLC is a formally chartered organization, mandated by Congress to promote, educate and facilitate technology transfer among more than 300 federal laboratories, research centers and agencies.
According to the FLC’s charter, the organizations goal is to “ensure the best use of taxpayers’ contributions to research and development (R&D) conducted at federal labs through the acceleration of the work into the market through collaborative partnerships with non-federal organizations such as private businesses, academia, and state and local governments.”
From the website:
“The FLC was organized in 1974 and formally chartered by the Federal Technology Transfer Act of 1986 to promote and strengthen technology transfer nationwide. Today, more than 300 federal laboratories, facilities and research centers and their parent agencies make up the FLC community. Members of the FLC community include world–renowned scientists, engineers, inventors, entrepreneurs, academia, laboratory personnel, and T2 professionals.”
www.FederalLabs.org 
Vigilant Aerospace is the leading developer of detect-and-avoid and airspace management software for uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS or drones). The company’s product, FlightHorizon, is based on two NASA patents and uses data from multiple sources to display a real-time picture of the air traffic around a UAS and to provide automatic avoidance maneuvers to prevent collisions. The software is designed to meet industry technical standards, to provide automatic safety and to allow UAS to safely fly beyond the sight of the pilot. The software has won multiple industry awards and the company has had contracts and users at NASA, the FAA, the U.S. Department of Defense and with a variety of drone development programs. Visit our website at www.VigilantAerospace.com