Launch Vehicle Classification for Decision-Making of Small Satellite Launch Options

There are multifarious stationary vehicles in urban driving environments. Autonomous vehicles need to make appropriate overtaking maneuver decisions to navigate through the stationary vehicles. In literature, overtaking maneuver decision problems have been addressed in the perspective of either discretionary lane-change or parked vehicle classification. While the former approaches are prone to generating undesired overtaking maneuvers in urban traffic scenarios, the latter approaches induce deadlock situations behind a stationary vehicle which is not distinctly classified as a parked vehicle. To overcome the limitations, we analyzed the significant decision factors in the traffic scenes and designed a Deep Neural Network (DNN) model to make human-like overtaking maneuver decisions. The significant traffic-related and intention-related decision factors were harmoniously extracted in the traffic scene interpretation process and were utilized as the inputs of the model to generate overtaking maneuver decisions in the same manner with the human driver. The overall validation results convinced that the extracted decision factors contributed to increasing the learning performance of the model, and consequently, the proposed decision-making system enabled the autonomous vehicles to generate more human-like overtaking maneuver decisions in various urban traffic scenarios.

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The FALCON Small Satellite Launch Vehicle: Development and First Flight

10.2514/6.iac-04-iaa.4.11.5.03 ◽

2004 ◽

Keyword(s):

Launch Vehicle ◽

Small Satellite ◽

Vehicle Development ◽

Satellite Launch Vehicle

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Iran will seek solid-fuel tech for space and missiles

Emerald Expert Briefings ◽

10.1108/oxan-db252251 ◽

2020 ◽

Keyword(s):

Solid Fuel ◽

Launch Vehicle ◽

Ballistic Missile ◽

Small Satellite ◽

Two Stage ◽

Content Type ◽

Cruise Missiles ◽

Satellite Launch Vehicle

Significance The Nur satellite was lifted by the two-stage Qased satellite launch vehicle (SLV) into orbit 425 kilometres from earth. This followed a second failed launch in February by the civilian arm of the space programme, which first succeeded in sending a small satellite into orbit in 2009. Although Tehran is still far from possessing a regular launch capability and US Space Command described the satellite as just “a tumbling webcam in space”, US, UK and French officials criticised the move, arguing that the technology could be used to advance Iran’s ballistic missile programme. Impacts US hawks will capitalise on the launch to argue that US adversaries are developing space capabilities that must be countered. Tehran is likely soon to develop cruise missiles finally approaching the 2,000-kilometre range threshold. Iran will focus on fielding missiles with smaller bodies, more manoeuvrable warheads, higher re-entry speeds and lower observability.

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