Astrobotic, CMU Complete Phase II of DALEC PNT Effort

Astrobotic and Carnegie Mellon University completed Phase II of DALEC. The effort advanced from TRL 3 to TRL 5 and met TRL 5 requirements.

Astrobotic's partner on the effort is Carnegie Mellon University, and the team completed DALEC Phase II.

DALEC advanced from TRL 3 to TRL 5, and the Phase II effort met TRL 5 requirements.

The system is intended to deliver PNT capabilities in places where GPS is unavailable.

Demonstrations took place in simulation, an indoor laboratory, and an outdoor lunar-like test environment.

The tests validated distributed localization algorithms and the embedded electronics platform.

Position estimates improved relative to non-collaborative approaches, and the system showed robustness to sensor dropouts.

Real-time software ran stably on embedded Linux hardware, while agents could join or leave the network through drop-in and drop-out capability.

Operation succeeded with minimal communication bandwidth, and the effort produced multi-agent simulation tools with realistic sensor and communication modeling.

DALEC is notable for lunar-industry observers because it targets PNT capabilities where GPS is unavailable and was demonstrated in a lunar-like test environment.

The verified results show improved position estimates, tolerance to sensor dropouts, stable embedded software, drop-in networking, and operation with minimal communication bandwidth.