Utah State University

Founder / ALTIUS Inventor / Engineer

Area-I ("area eye") was an aerospace defense technology company based in the metro-Atlanta, Georgia area. Area-I, an engineering and innovation leader in UAS Technology, has been engaged in aircraft design and flight testing for the Air Force, Navy, Army, NOAA and NASA since 2009.  Area-I held core expertise in the aerodynamic and structural design of highly optimized, mission-specific aircraft as well as the flight control and autonomy that enable those aircraft to accomplish their missions with minimal operator input.

Area-I’s most notable platform is ALTIUS, a family of tube-stored, tube-launched autonomous aircraft/loitering munitions that boasts best-in-class autonomy, endurance, payload capacity, and launch flexibility having successfully launched from a wide variety fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft, land vehicles, and sea platforms. 

Area-I was acquired by Anduril industries in 2021.

Area-I, Inc.

Founder / Chief Executive Officer

-Principal Investigator: Implementation of Extreme STOL Capability in Cruise Efficient Aircraft, NASA Dryden Flight Research Center.  Dr. Alley led the design and fabrication of a jet-powered, Extreme STOL-capable UAS that enables direct performance comparisons between an aircraft equipped with circulation control-based high lift devices and an aircraft equipped with conventional high lift devices at the same wing loading, as well as evaluations of real-world issues associated with integrating circulation control-based high lift devices into a flight-ready vehicle

-Chief Engineer: An Autonomous UAS Detect, Sense, and Avoid System (AU-DSA), U.S. Navy Office of Naval Research.  Dr. Alley led the development and flight testing of a practical, Autonomous UAS Detect, Sense, and Avoid (AU-DSA) system.  

-Chief Engineer: Experimental validation of metrics-driven enhanced-safety (ME) adaptive control, NASA Internal Resilient Aircraft Controller (IRAC) NRA.  Dr. Alley designed and flight tested, custom mechanisms for safely emulating various in-flight uncertainties (aerodynamic, mass/inertial, aeroelastic, and wing damage) in actual UAS flight experiments.

-Chief Engineer: A Small Image-Aided Navigation and Path-planning System (SINAPS) for Small UAVs, U.S. Army, Aviation Applied Technology Directorate.  Dr. Alley led the integration and flight testing of the SINAPS system components and developed a kinodynamic trajectory planner that minimized UAS deviations from commanded flight paths.

Aerotonomy, Inc.

Chief Technical Officer

-Research faculty member in the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering.

-Taught unmanned aircraft design class and was the faculty advisor for the AIAA Design Build Fly and SAE Aero Design student competitions.

Georgia Tech School of Aerospace Engineering

Research Engineer II

-Tasked with the development and deployment of unmanned vehicle systems for the protection of critical infrastructure at Department of Energy laboratories 

-Designated pilot-in-command for all laboratory UAV operations; liaison with Federal Aviation Administration responsible for ensuring safe UAV operations and compliance with certificate of authorization

-Gained extensive experience as safety pilot and ground station operator for Arcturus T-15 UAVs equipped with Cloud Cap Technology’s Piccolo II autopilots and TASE gimbaled EO cameras

Idaho National Laboratory

Scientist-Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Programs

-PhD Research: Development of the Pneumatic Twisteron through the use of Circulation Control Technology   
 
-Chief Engineer for USU Wright Flyer (www.usuwrightflyer.org)

-Adjunct Instructor/Project Manager of USU Wright Flyer design group charged with the aerodynamic and structural redesign of the 1905 Wright Flyer

-Investigated the feasibility of a recoverable and reusable DART (a small rocket used for high altitude atmospheric testing)

-Adjunct Instructor of a senior-level Mechanical/Aerospace engineering class, Dynamics of Atmospheric Flight  (student evaluated overall-quality-of-course score of 5.7 out of 6)

Nicholas Alley