Smart GNC for Advanced Air Mobility

Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) provides the essential algorithms and systems necessary for autonomous, stable, and safe flight of aerospace vehicles. Navigation determines the vehicle’s attitude, position, and velocity, providing crucial input for Guidance to generate commands. Control, in turn, executes these guidance inputs while ensuring stability. 

GNC is vital for the advancement of aerial systems, integrating automatic control, trajectory generation, and intelligent systems. Additionally, smart GNC focuses on achieving higher levels of autonomy for both single and multiple-vehicle missions through innovative algorithms. Therefore, Smart GNC must be capable for real-time adjustments allowing for safe operation in challenging weather and urban conditions. 

The Focus Group is interested in advanced guidance, navigation and control algorithms for the safe, efficient, and autonomous operation of future air vehicles. These systems are critical to ensuring that urban air taxis, drones, and other innovative aerial vehicles can safely operate in complex, highly dynamic environments while interacting with other airspace users and adhering to regulatory standards. In this Focus Group, TUM-IAS Rudolf Diesel Industry Fellow Prof. Raziye Tekin collaborates with her host Prof. Florian Holzapfel and his team (TUM Institute of Flight System Dynamics). Many advanced air vehicles, especially electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, require precise control to manage battery consumption and optimize flight duration, where the guidance algorithms play a vital role for trajectory generation. The Focus Group’s aim is to reduce energy usage by optimizing flight paths, speeds, and altitudes with applicable algorithms that can determine online trajectories.