Patent — available for licensing
Enhancing Fault Isolation and Detection for Electric Powertrains of UAVs
A NASA invention available to explore as a licensing opportunity.
About this technology
Overview
NASAs System-Wide Safety (SWS) project is developing innovative data solutions to assure safe, rapid, and repeatable access to a transformed National Airspace System. The increasing number of electric propulsion systems that will enter the airspace will require systems that ensure high safety standards in the low-altitude airspace. One element that can help ensure safety is proper diagnosis of failures via Fault Detection and Isolation (FDI). NASA Ames has developed a fault isolation approach for electric powertrains of unmanned aerial vehicles. It leverages a combination of Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) and Bayesian Networks (BN) to create a dependability structure within a diagnostic framework-mapping fault and failure events from the FMEA within a BN. This framework helps the fault isolation process by identifying the probability of occurrence of specific fault or root causes given evidence observed through sensor signals.