Development of a small parafoil vehicle for precision delivery

Abstract

The goal of the MIT Draper Partnership Program is to develop a system capable of deploying a cluster of ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) sensors over an area of interest. One of the proposed methods is a guided parafoil vehicle that is deployed from a UAV. After unfurling its canopy, it is envisioned that the vehicle would follow a planned trajectory to the target, and vision-based targeting system would be employed to provide the necessary accuracy. A 6DOF parafoil simulation was created in the Matlab/Simulink environment to study the parafoil dynamics and assess the feasibility of the delivery method. The parafoil's range and controllability were tested under a variety of simulated wind conditions, and a hypothetical mission was conceived to evaluate the performance of the proposed trajectory designs and guidance laws. Also, an extended Kalman filter was incorporated into the simulation to determine effectiveness of the camera-based targeting system and other navigation sensors.