2009 R&D 100 Winner
Founded on the seminal work of Stephen Paris and Charles Hargraves, Optimal Trajectories by Implicit Simulation program version 4 (OTIS4) was developed and refined by NASA Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio, and Boeing Research and Technology, Seattle, Wash., to be a general purpose software program used to perform trajectory performance studies. Though geared initially to provide sophisticated trajectory simulations for aerospace vehicles, OTIS4, a free program, can analyze a wide variety of vehicles, including aircraft, missiles, re-entry vehicles, hypervelocity vehicles, satellites, and interplanetary vehicles. OTIS4 is a point mass, three degree of freedom (3DOF) simulation program for single vehicles. Options allow six degree of freedom (6DOF) simulations and several types of special multiple vehicle problems. Data obtained using OTIS4 will allow a variety of studies to be accomplished including vehicle and sub-system design trades, guidance studies, error analyses, and mission planning. OTIS4's highly generalized modeling capabilities allow the development of a progressively more detailed simulation as the vehicle and mission design advance without abandoning the basic simulation framework. The simplified models used in the preliminary design can be replaced by more faithful representations of the vehicle design. More realistic constraints can be added and design options easily traded off to obtain greater insight into the final design.OTIS4 is the only available software that has the capability to optimize aerospace trajectories in all phases of flight in addition to non-aerospace applications.
Technology
Trajectory software
Developers
NASA Glenn Research Center
Boeing Research and Technology
