NASA Autonomous Rotorcraft Project
Project Management leads to industry leader in innovative aviation
A. The Five Project Management Process Groups
The five project management process groups begins with 'The scoping process group ' which can also be referred to as the initiating process. The process includes all processes that relate to one question 'What is the task? ' and 'What do you need to do? '. Thus, NASA 's vision is to constantly develop flight technologies and from this NASA embarked on on the Autonomous Rotorcraft Project. The project entails developing an unmanned helicopter that ideally operates with the decision making skill of a piloted aircraft. The scoping process means that project management team can establish what is need to achieve the clients needs, in this project they include;
-manoeuvre around obstacles without human supervision
-accomplish top level mission goals
-conduct vehicle health management activities, which is diagnosing and fixing problems on the machine automatically
- to be able to re plan the mission if unforeseen obstacles occur.
Secondly is the process of project planning process relates to the question 'How will you do it? '.
The complexity of this process is unrealised as it requires technologies that are yet to be discovered. For example, just to travel from point A -B the autonomous helicopter will need to sense, classify and identify surrounding landmarks and then reconcile those landmarks with stored maps. It will then have to localise itself with those specific landmarks, rapidly compute a path that would keep it away from various oncoming obstacles and closely follow its chosen path. These ideas remain difficult in the project planning stage as there is a lack of available autonomous technologies and resources. Not only do NASA want to create an Autonomous Rotorcraft it also seeks to advance unmanned vehicle operations for future projects( Whalley, 2003).
References: 1.Freed, E (2006) An unmanned Aerial System for Autonomous Surveillance. Retrieved on the 5th of April 2013. From http://www.aaai.org/Papers/Workshops/2006/WS-06-03/WS06-03-009.pdf 2. Whalley, M (2003) The NASA Autonomous Rotorcraft Project. Retrieved on the 10th April, 2013. From http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar_url?hl=en&q=http://www.worddocx.com/12043/co1710.doc&sa=X&scisig=AAGBfm2aUXSl6MbCR1W29RtpiA2Da4l4uw&oi=scholarr&ei=vZhwUdCtL8uaiAfQgIHgAg&ved=0CCsQgAMoADAA