SUMMARY

Helicopters are a vital asset to both civilian and military sea operations. Navy and Marine missions are conducted on a continuous basis to support sea operations and occur during the day, at night, and in all types of weather conditions. Due to aircraft endurance limits, helicopter ship landings are sometimes time critical, forcing landings in non-ideal conditions. Landing a helicopter safely on a ship at sea is a difficult task for military helicopter pilots as it is difficult to accurately estimate the orientation of the landing surface as the ship heaves, pitches, and rolls. Compounded with the limit landing area, small ships are even more susceptible to large movements in inclement weather. There has be limited research on physical changes to the body of the vehicle that could help solve the problem of landing on unknown sites. Aircraft equipped with articulated landing gear have the potential to rapidly and safely land on highly sloped terrain that is much greater than current limits of approximately 10 degrees. Furthermore, articulated landing gear will enable these aircrafts to land onto small, moving landing areas that is not possible with current rotorcraft. This new active landing gear concept could be used by both piloted and autonomous aircraft, and could expand operational capability for future rotorcraft by greatly expanding available landing areas and greatly increasing the speed of landing while reducing pilot workload.