Autonomy for Advanced Flight Systems

Focus Areas

Autonomy for Advanced Flight Systems works to enable autonomous navigation and terminal guidance through GPS-denied environments on Sandia’s renowned advanced flight systems. Sandia does research in the areas of perception, localization, path planning, and navigation, guidance and control (NG&C).  Autonomy for Advanced Flight Systems supports missile and air defense by developing autonomous defeat systems, as well as autonomous adversary test-target systems.

Prior Work

  • Development of strike capabilities designed to enable the effective targeting and use of weapons systems in GPS-denied environments through the application of sensing technology
  • SAR and high-precision guidance and navigation
  • Extensive capabilities in missile defense

Ongoing Research

  • Real-time trajectory generation (RTTG), enabling on-the-fly changes to hypersonic trajectories
  • Autonomous closed-loop navigation, guidance, and terminal-stage targeting capability for hypersonic strike
  • Autonomy-enabling integrated SAR/navigation/guidance mode
  • Interceptor concepts that leverage current LCMD nonlinear predictive guidance principles
  • Development of autonomous defense capabilities