Safer, more accurate delivery of humanitarian aid by air
Oftentimes the only way to deliver humanitarian aid is by airdrop. The tsunami disaster and big earthquake in the mountainous region of Pakistan are just two recent examples. Dropping heavy loads from aircraft is expensive and also raises safety issues, however. This compelled the FASTwing consortium to seek out new solutions. The parafoil developed during the project had strict requirements in terms of weight and flexibility. The creation of the navigation hardware and software was delegated to the National Aerospace Laboratory (NLR) in the Netherlands. The European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) also contributed to this task. Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) products were used in order to facilitate future system upgrades. The focus was on maintaining system weight and dimensions at a minimum. With respect to the software, a Basic Software Package (BSW), with an operating system and drivers to manage interfacing with other systems on the parafoil, was installed. The main advantage of this approach is that the navigation software is autonomous and can be updated independent of the other software components. The NLR and its FASTwing partners were able to demonstrate the viability of their parafoil solution during the project. The navigation component can easily be adapted to other types of aircraft. In addition to aid delivery, there are also considerable opportunities in rescue and recovery missions, as well as military applications.
