The SAFITTM concept was originally developed as a research testing platform to support NASA's future research in autonomous systems. A high-integrity version of SAFITTM would provide a much more robust and reliable platform, allowing safe flight testing of unproven test systems, including high-integrity traffic and obstacle avoidance and geospatial containment. The advanced ground control station supports NASA's research into single operators safely and effectively managing multiple UAS as well as research into how multiple autonomous UAS can cooperatively work together on missions, with SAFITTM protections providing separation assurance between the multiple UAS so that functionality does not have to be incorporated into the test software. AAG believes that there is a significant commercial market for our product, and the reuse of NASA's ICAROUS software and the further application of formal methods are thus a valuable commercial spinoff from NASA's research, demonstrating the practical application of NASA's research to solve real-world problems.
There is high commercial potential for high-integrity SAFITTM from research institutions, commercial UAS manufacturers, and companies that wish to utilize UAS in their routine business operations because current UAS flight management systems are typically of limited reliability. Our multi-UAS ground control station enables a wide variety of missions that are of interest in the commercial community. There is also a commercial market for our high-integrity core functionality as a closed core into which other software developers could add open-source functions, with our core system effectively bounding the behavior of any software added by third parties.
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