In June, researchers from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) and Bell Helicopter met to further advance the development of a micro UAS.

Described as a “miniature, lightweight reconnaissance vehicle,” the UAS is designed to be carried onto the battlefield by soldiers, and deployed in a confined space.

The relationship between Bell and ARL has roots dating back to November 2016, when Bell representatives attended ARL's open campus event. The two entities spent a year and a half building their relationship and sharing information before signing a five-year cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) in March 2018.

“The CRADA lets us work together,” says Dr. John Hrynuk, a mechanical engineer in ARL's Vehicle Technology Directorate.

“We're trying to get data on the fundamental level, to build up a knowledge base of vehicles, because their expertise is in designing the vehicles, whereas our expertise is the fundamentals of them.”

This is a new way of doing business between ARL and Bell, Hrynuk points out.

“We want new technology; they want new vehicles,” Hrynuk says. “Together, we want to enhance technologies for the Soldiers -- that's what makes it the absolute perfect collaboration.”

Recently, Bell engineers Levi Hefner and Dakota Easley visited ARL to use its wind tunnel to perform experiments on the micro UAS.

The visit came after Bell researchers noticed vehicle control challenges during early flight testing. ARL scientists and equipment provided Bell engineers with the help that they needed to isolate their earlier challenges and improve the performance of the UAS.

“The wind tunnel here at ARL has been beneficial in providing data that explains why certain things are happening on the control side,” Hefner says. “Now we're able to better analyze our tests to enhance the performance of our vehicles.”

The collaborative effort to improve the UAS has been “largely successful” thus far, officials say. The two parties worked well together as they each took advantage of their respective strengths to manage different aspects of the development process.

“This collaboration is great because we're heading into a new design space with these small vehicles,” Hefner explains. “ARL has the resources and expertise to help us out, and together we can build a better vehicle than either of us could build alone.”

According to Dr. Jaret C. Riddick, VTD director, the main goal of the collaboration is to “combine the resources of both establishments to develop technologies to protect Soldiers.”

“I am very excited about this collaboration with Bell, and to have Levi and Dakota working side-by-side with ARL researchers in our laboratories here at APG,” Riddick says. “Partnering with industry early on in the discovery phase will allow us to accelerate the maturation and transition of exceptional outcomes from our basic and applied research objectives and will enable us to accelerate getting innovative technology into the hands of the warfighter faster.”