The Purdue School of Aeronautics and Astronautics hosted the annual stakeholder meeting of the NASA University Leadership Initiative (ULI) project focused on Secured and Safe Assured Autonomy (S2A2). This 3-day conference, beginning on June 22, included academic presentations and research poster sessions on topics of interest around autonomous operation of aerial and space vehicles.

This ULI brings together a diverse interdisciplinary team of experts from three universities and four industry partner companies, to develop new technologies and procedures for a future filled with autonomous aerial vehicles.

"We were thrilled to host this meeting, especially so since our NASA sponsor and external advisory board were quite impressed with the progress we've made in research and education/outreach," said Purdue AAE Professor Dan Delaurentis, one of the principal investigators on the project.

The S2A2 partners are focused on solving four specific technical challenges related to autonomous flight: perception, flight planning and navigation; secure autonomy; verification, testing and evaluation; and system integration.

Find more photos from the conference on our Flickr photo album.

The 2022 conference featured research presentations, student poster sessions, and a panel discussion on the possibility of autonomous systems to learn and intelligently improve their methods, as a means of self-verification. Attendees also toured the Purdue UAS Research and Test Facility, which features the world’s largest indoor motion capture system.

A photo album from the conference is available on Flickr.

North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University is the lead university on the S2A2 ULI project. Member schools are the Georgia Institute of Technology and Purdue University, along with industry partners Aurora Flight Sciences, Alaka’i Technologies Corporation, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, and Northrop Grumman Corporation.

Story and photos by Alan Cesar