Safe and feasible path planning is crucial for achieving autonomous navigation of fixed-wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in complex environments. However, due to the high-speed flight and complex control requirements of fixed-wing UAVs, ensuring the feasibility and safety of planned paths in complex environments remains challenging. Researchers at Beihang University have developed a feasible path planning algorithm named Closed-loop Radial Ray A* (CL-RaA*). The core components of the CL-RaA* include an adaptive variable-step-size path search and a just-in-time expansion primitive. By integrating these two components and conducting safety checks on the trajectories to be expanded, the CL-RaA* can rapidly generate safe and feasible paths that satisfy the differential constraints of fixed-wing UAVs.

Modern flight control demands faster response, greater adaptability, and resilience against unknowns—challenges traditional control systems struggle to meet. Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion (INDI) has emerged as a compelling solution, shifting control logic away from models toward real-time measurements. In a sweeping two-part review, researchers chart the path of INDI from its mathematical roots to its growing role inapplications. With its modular structure and built-in robustness, INDI is no longer just an academic concept.

SAN ANTONIO — July 7, 2025 — Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) is expanding its heat exchanger testing capabilities to include megawatt-scale performance evaluations, an offering matched by only a handful of facilities worldwide. Heat exchangers efficiently transfer heat between two or more fluids without mixing for a wide variety of heating and cooling applications.

A new autonomous underwater vehicle imaged a previously unexplored portion of the seafloor in ultra-deep waters near the Mariana Trench. Operationalizing this technology for the first time was part of a mission led by the Ocean Exploration Cooperative Institute, based at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography, with support from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, and the U.S. Geological Survey.

A servicing spacecraft equipped with a compliant flexible rod has emerged as an innovative solution for detumbling defunct satellites, but the contact-induced vibrations of the flexible rod and severe disturbance pose significant challenges to operational accuracy and safety. Despite the extensive research on vibration suppression and detumbling control for tumbling satellites, the combined application of nonlinear energy sink with active varying stiffness (NES-AVS) for flexible rod vibration suppression in servicing spacecraft has yet to be comprehensively studied, and addressing this research gap is crucial as existing methods struggle to achieve both vibration reduction and guaranteed control performance under contact-induced disturbance.

Swansea University, Novel Engineering Consultants Ltd (Novel), and Airbus Endeavr Wales—a unique initiative between the Welsh Government and Airbus Defence and Space—are collaborating on a groundbreaking research initiative to strengthen aerospace systems against cyberattacks.