Introduction

ULTOR® technology was developed by AOS to provide extremely accurate target recognition technology for missile interceptor applications. At the heart of ULTOR® is a high bandwidth processing engine that can operate on high sensor frame rate data.
   

Applications

AOS has applied ULTOR® technology to the application of active six-degree-of-freedom (6DOF) measurement of objects. AOS developed the Advanced Video Guidance  Sensor (AVGS) for NASA and DARPA in support of the DART and Orbital Express missions. Using laser illuminators and retro-reflector targets, the position and attitude of objects can be measured in real-time. For ULTOR® Active, AOS has combined the robust AVGS heritage optical system with the high-bandwidth precision computing of ULTOR®. The result is an order of magnitude improvement in accuracy and precision for the ULTOR® Active system. ULTOR® Active is mature sensor technology that provides relative navigation information crucial for proximity operations and Automated Rendezvous and Docking (AR&D) applications.

Hardware

AOS has developed several generations of ULTOR® Active system that have been validated in Hardware-In-Loop test facilities such as the NASA/MSFC Flight Robotics Lab and the NASA/GSFC Hubble Space Telescope Soft Capture Mechanism test lab. AOS has designed, developed and delivered several generations of space flight retro-reflector targets and ULTOR® Active ground based systems to NASA and DARPA.

   
For more information contact:

Joel Hannah
civilspace@aos-inc.com