Autonomy Experimentation in an Operationally Relevant Scenario

Aurora Flight Sciences' Autonomy Enabled H-1 (AEH-1) was developed under the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Autonomous Aerial Cargo Utility System (AACUS) program. AACUS was designed to provide autonomous control of a full-scale rotorcraft, giving supervisory control to an Air Vehicle Operator (AVO) with no specialized aviation experience. To that end Aurora AEH-1 to provide a robust testbed for the autonomy system. After successfully completing that five-year Innovative Naval Prototype (INP) program with demonstrated autonomous capabilities in closed loop flight, the AEH-1 was selected for experimentation in support of the USMC Sea Dragon 25 FY 18 Hybrid logistics experiment, the purpose of which was to "examine the ability of the Marine Air Ground Task Force (MAGTF) to conduct hybrid logistics through science and technology development." The experimentation took place during the United States Marine Corps (USMC) Integrated Training Exercise (ITX) 3- 18.