Research papers
5,883 papers · NASA NTRS, NTSB, FAA CAMI
NASA NTRS · 1,269 NTSB Safety Studies · 12 NTSB Aircraft Accident Reports · 17 Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons · 1,993
5,883 matches
- NASA NTRS 2026 Accepted Manuscript
Reachability-Based Forced Landing System
- NASA NTRS 2026 LaRC Other - NESC Technical Bulletin
NASA Engineering and Safety Center Technical Bulletin No. 26-07: Aluminum Alloy 2219 Material Guidance
Improper casting and forging processes in the manufacture of aluminum alloy 2219 can lead to microstructural defects that result in a sub-optimal response to anodic surface treatments and an increase in corrosion suscept…
- NASA NTRS 2026 ARC Presentation
Off-Topic Chatter as an Unobtrusive Assessment of Workload
Prior work suggests that off-topic (OT) chatter during collaborative scheduling is negatively associated with workload. Because of the complexities in assessing real-time workload in a space environment, this finding has…
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
System Identification of an Octocopter in Hover using Full-Harmonic Orthogonal Multisine Inputs
A new method for multi-input flight maneuver design for system identification is presented. The method consists of injecting "full-harmonic" orthogonal multisine signals into the flight control system.
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
Safe Learning-Based Adaptive Augmentation Control for Fixed-Wing UAV under Uncertainty
This paper presents a learning-based adaptive augmentation control concept inspired by the adaptation mechanisms of conventional adaptive control, while not being restricted to their specific parametric adaptation struct…
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
Extracting hydrogel properties by watching hydrogel particles moving through solid ice
Strikingly, when hydrogel particles are embedded in ice in a temperature gradient, they move through the solid ice towards warmer temperatures, while swelling as they warm up.
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
Mechanisms of transonic buffet over supercritical airfoils revealed by direct numerical simulations
We use direct numerical simulations to study the turbulent transonic flow over a supercritical airfoil, spanning the transition from stable conditions to fully developed buffet at chord-based Reynolds numbers of $3\times…
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
Finite-Horizon Robustness Analysis under Mixed Disturbances using Signal-IQCs
Common worst-case analyses for uncertain finite-horizon systems consider quadratic performance metrics based on the strict Bounded Real Lemma.
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
Quasi-Static Fault-Tolerant Feedback Control of a Quadrotor under Rotor Failure with Provable Safety Guarantees
This paper presents a nonlinear control law for a quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) under single-rotor failure that guarantees set stabilization via quasi-static feedback (QSF).
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
Orientation-Aware Control and Trajectory Design for Aerial RIS-Assisted Wireless Communications
Aerial Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (ARISs) can enhance wireless connectivity in obstructed environments by combining reconfigurable metasurfaces with aerial mobility.
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
Beyond RSRP Coverage: UAV Serviceability in Interference-Limited Urban 5G NR Networks
Reference signal received power (RSRP) is commonly used to assess 5G cellular coverage, but it may substantially overestimate the connectivity available to cellular-connected unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) under strong …
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
A Mean-Field Approach for Safe Routing of Multi-Destination Urban Air Mobility Networks
As Urban Air Mobility (UAM) systems scale toward high-density operations, managing autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) traffic requires control frameworks that are both tractable and safety-critical.
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
Neuro-Symbolic Agentic AI for Networked Low-Altitude UAVs
Networked low-altitude unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) need reliable and adaptive decision-making capabilities to operate under uncertain observations, dynamic environments, and intermittent connectivity, while many exis…
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
Toward Mission-Critical ISAC: Reliable Energy-Aware Coordination in UAV Swarms
Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarms deployed in mission-critical applications must simultaneously track a mobile aerial target and maintain reliable data links.
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
Learning-Based Dynamic Obstacle Avoidance for a UAV Using Only Three Range Sensors
We present a learning-based approach to kinodynamic online motion planning for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) operating at a fixed altitude in unknown dynamic environments, where real-time avoidance of both static and …
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
Belief-Adaptive Online Autonomy for Quadrotor UAV Navigation under GNSS Degradation in Urban Environments
Reliable online autonomy is critical for quadrotor operation in urban airspaces, where global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) measurements suffer from multipath, blockage, and latency issues, introducing non-stationa…
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
nBMS, a Neuromorphic Battery Management System with a Silicon-Validated Spiking State-of-Charge Core for eVTOL Aircraft
State-of-charge (SoC) estimation for electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft must run on the vehicle under hard energy and certification budgets, on a duty cycle unlike anything in the automotive literatu…
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
Quantifying the Reality Gap for RL-Based UAV Placement at mmWave and Sub-THz
Reinforcement learning (RL) policies for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) placement in mmWave and sub-terahertz networks are typically trained on simplified analytical channels.
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
Trajectory Bundle Method in SE(3) for Black-Box Fixed-Wing Aircraft Trajectory Optimization
Dynamically feasible trajectory optimization for rigid-body systems is naturally formulated on the special Euclidean group SE(3) but is challenging when dynamics are available only as black-box computations without deriv…
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
Uncertainty-Aware Conflict Detection Against Operator-Conditioned Weather Hazards
Strategic flight plan validation in Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) environments requires robust methods for predicting aircraft state uncertainty and detecting potential conflicts with dynamic airspace hazards.
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
Tethered UAVs for Dense Urban Connectivity
This paper evaluates the downlink performance of 5G non-terrestrial networks (NTNs) realized via tethered unmanned aerial vehicle (TUAV)-mounted base stations, and compares it against conventional 5G terrestrial networks…
- NASA NTRS 2026 LaRC Other - Technical Report
Great Basin Water Resources: Creating a Remote Sensing User-Interface to Support Water Resource and Wetland Management for Inland Lakes
Saline terminal lakes across the Great Basin are rapidly shrinking due to increasing water demand, groundwater extraction, and climate change, threatening wetland ecosystems, biodiversity, regional economies, and public …
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
Propeller-wing interactions of a lift + cruise eVTOL configuration during transition
The wakes of a lift + cruise aircraft's vertical lift propellers interact with the wing during the transition from hover to forward flight.
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
Dynamic System Emulation: Fixed Wing Dynamics on a Multicopter
This work presents a control framework that enables a multicopter equipped with a two-axis gimbal to emulate the flight dynamics of a fixed-wing aircraft.
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
FALCON-S: Fixed-wing ground-effect Aerodynamics Simulator and Flight Control Learning Suite
We present a modular, high-fidelity simulation framework for the development and benchmarking of flight control strategies in fixed-wing aerial robots operating near the ground.
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
Unsteady Thin-Airfoil Theory Revisited: An Approximate Analytical Solution and the Self-Similar Wagner Effect in Viscous Flows
An approximate analytical solution for the unsteady lift of a thin airfoil with a general unsteady motion is derived from a viscous-flow perspective, where the wake vortex-sheet strength is given in an explicit convoluti…
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
Phase Reduction Analysis of Transonic Buffet
This paper develops a phase-reduced description of transonic buffet, treating buffet as a stable autonomous fluid limit cycle that is weakly perturbed by harmonic structural motion.
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
Information-Guided Safe Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Gas Source Localization using sUAS
The autonomous localization of fugitive gas emissions using small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS) constitutes a fundamentally ill-posed inverse problem.
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
Two-phase Temperature Reconstruction in Ice-Water Systems
What controls heat transport when liquid water interacts with ice? Answering this question is essential for understanding water bodies undergoing phase change.
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
Quantum-Based k-Coverage Optimization for UAV-Aided Search and Rescue Missions
In large-scale disaster scenarios, rapid localization of missing persons is a critical challenge for search-and-rescue (SAR) operations.
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
Freezing of a deformable water-saturated porous medium. Part I: THM formulation, OpenGeoSys-6 implementation and benchmarking
In this contribution, Part I, we present a coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical formulation for modeling and analyzing water-to-ice phase change in a deformable fully-saturated porous medium.
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
Securing Cooperative Sensing in UAV Swarms Against Conformity-Driven Byzantine Attacks
In integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) enabled 6G unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarm networks, the widely adopted imitation-based conformity cooperation mechanism can be exploited by Byzantine attackers to fabri…
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
Designing, Deployment and Field Testing of C2Stack for Networked Intelligent Software-Defined UAVs
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are emerging as critical enablers of next-generation wireless networking and autonomous systems. Despite their potential, deploying and testing networked UAV systems in real-world environm…
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
Low-Altitude Fluid Antenna Network with Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning
Low-altitude wireless networks (LAWNs) integrate terrestrial and aerial platforms to provide ubiquitous communication, sensing, and localization services for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and electric vertical takeoff …
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
Joint Spectrum and Airspace Resource Optimization for Low-altitude Wireless Network
Low-altitude wireless networks have emerged as a promising platform for enabling the safe and efficient operation of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
FlyBlind: Cross-Slice Timeliness Attacks on UAV Situational Awareness over 5G
Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) Uncrewed Aerial Systems (UAS) operating over 5G Standalone (SA) networks use a shared User Plane for both command-and-control (C2) data and video feedback.
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
Towards Safe Reinforcement Learning with Reduced Conservativeness: A Case Study on Drone Flight Control
Incorporating formal methods into reinforcement learning (RL) has the potential to result in the best of both worlds, combining the robustness of formal guarantees with the adaptability and learning capabilities of RL, t…
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
Density Field of Dilute Particle Flow in Two-Fluid Model with Incompressible Carrier Flow
We clarify some mathematical features of the density of a dilute particle flow on a body surface in a two-fluid model, with a view toward its application to icing simulations.
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
Phantom Navigator: Stealthy and Precise Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Redirection with Real-Time Tracking and GPS Spoofing
Redirecting unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) from their intended mission trajectories has been an active area of research. However, existing UAV redirection attacks lack reliability, precision, and covertness for a target…
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
SonicNudge: Controlled Displacement of Hovering UAVs via Estimator-Controller Coupling
UAV displacement attacks have traditionally relied on spoofing sensors that directly report position or translational motion, such as GNSS and optical flow.
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
Ice melting in an oscillatory flow
We investigate the melting dynamics of an ice disk subjected to an external oscillatory flow using two-dimensional direct numerical simulations, in the absence of buoyancy, varying the flow amplitude and its oscillation …
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
Leveraging UAV Autonomy for Minimum 4D Flight Authorization Volumes
The increasing UAV traffic in urban areas has prompted the creation of U-space, an EASA framework for safe and efficient unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) operations.
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
Spinning Quadrotor: Hover Thrust Augmentation with Passive Lifting Surfaces
Conventional multirotor aerial vehicles actively suppress yaw rotation during hover, expending power to maintain a fixed heading despite the fact that yaw regulation is not required for force balance or altitude control.…
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
Dynamic Inversion: An Incrementally Evolving Methodology for Flight Control Design
Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion (NDI) has become a standard methodology in flight control law design. It offers an intuitive approach to decouple commanded variable responses, handle system nonlinearities, and adapt to opera…
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
A Safety-Driven Architectural Framework for Fail-Operational Drone Swarms in Critical Missions
The certification of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) swarms for safety-critical operations requires verifiable design assurance. Airworthiness standards demand deterministic reliability, whereas multi-agent coordination al…
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
Taming the Tilt: A Unified Pilot Control Concept for Transformational eVTOL Aircraft
Transformational electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) vehicles have gained significant attention over the past decade due to their efficient wing-borne cruise capabilities and reduced reliance on ground-based i…
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
Geometry-Aware DRL for Multi-Subband Scheduling in Satellite-Assisted UAM Networks
In this paper, we investigate downlink scheduling for urban air mobility (UAM) in a cooperative space-air-ground integrated network. Multiple ground stations (GSs) employ narrow three-dimensional beams and share spectrum…
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
ETA Coordination at UAM Corridor Merging Points Using Worst-Case and Stochastic Trajectory Bounds
We study an Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA)-based traffic-coordination framework for Urban Air Mobility corridors with merging at constrained waypoints (CWPs), where approved ETAs at CWPs serve as Required Times of Arriv…
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
Demand-Driven Vertiport Siting and Discrete-Event Fleet Simulation for On-Demand Urban Air Mobility Network Design
This paper presents a demand-driven framework for on-demand Urban Air Mobility (UAM) network design that links vertiport siting, fleet simulation, and door-to-door travel-time feasibility.
- arXiv 2026 ARXIV arXiv preprint
Nonlinear Model Predictive Control via Sequential Convex Programming for Drone-to-Drone Docking
Autonomous mid-air docking of multi-rotor vehicles under disturbance-driven target motion poses a constrained non-linear trajectory optimization challenge.