NASA Systems Available to Upgrade Your Drone’s Abilities

The NASA Safe2Ditch technology offers autonomous crash management to a safe and clear ditch site for small UAVs.
The NASA Safe2Ditch technology offers autonomous crash management to a safe and clear ditch site for small UAVs.


NASAs Autonomous Positioning and Navigation Network is a machine-to-machine (M2M) network navigation protocol to enable aircraft to perform autonomous navigation and positioning, even in the most challenging of environments.
NASA's Autonomous Positioning and Navigation Network is a machine-to-machine (M2M) network navigation protocol to enable aircraft to perform autonomous navigation and positioning, even in the most challenging of environments.


The causes of rotor noise that the NASA Propeller/Rotor Phase Control can help eliminate.
The causes of rotor noise that the NASA Propeller/Rotor Phase Control can help eliminate.

Looking for ways to upgrade your UAVs without building tons of new hardware? We’ve picked out some useful NASA systems that can unlock new abilities for your swarm, allowing them to do more work for you without you having to do more work on them.

Keep drones from crash landing in someone’s living room
With drone package delivery on the horizon, UAVs need a system that can keep them from making a crash landing in unsafe spots (like a roof or a busy street) without the need of a human pilot. Enter NASA’s Safe2Ditch system, which can be easily added to existing UAVs. It provides the drone with an automatic ability to find the safest place to land in case of an emergency.

Track drones in areas without GPS access
GPS navigation is ingrained so much in daily life, it can often be taken for granted. Unfortunately, GPS isn’t available everywhere, but that doesn’t have to stop your UAVs from getting around. The Autonomous Positioning and Navigation Network can help you keep up with drones by allowing them to navigate based on the position of other drones in the fleet. Plus, improvements to the network architecture may be as simple as a software update.

Easy solution to hush up noisy drones
Community noise pollution from busy, buzzing drones is a big barrier that is keeping UAVs from becoming the new normal in package delivery. But, thanks to this NASA tech that tweaks the position of the propellers, drone noise is significantly decreased. This tech can also be easily added to drones with very little additional hardware.

Interested in licensing the tech mentioned above? Follow the links to apply through our website. You can also browse our entire technology portfolio here.

Follow the NASA Technology Transfer Program on twitter @NASAsolutions for the latest updates on technologies available for licensing.

Stay up to date, follow NASA's Technology Transfer Program on:
facebook twitter linkedin youtube
Facebook Logo Twitter Logo Linkedin Logo Youtube Logo