REDSTONE ARSENAL, Ala. (Jan. 21, 2016) -- A U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center employee was recently recognized by the Army Modeling and Simulation Office for significant advances in modeling and simulation.
Electronics engineer Gregory Reynolds received an Army Modeling and Simulation Award in the Test and Evaluation Individual category for fiscal year 2015. The award acknowledged Reynolds' work in the Gray Eagle Unmanned Aircraft System Modeling, Navigation and Integration Lab.
"He has natural leadership abilities that have directly led to the successful set-up and operation of the GEMNI lab," said Virginia Overstreet, AMRDEC's Navigation Technology Function chief.
AMRDEC, one of seven U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command centers and laboratories, established the GEMNI Lab through the Weapons Development and Integration Directorate to test, evaluate and overcome vulnerabilities of the MQ-1C Gray Eagle system.
"The growing need for reduced flight testing of navigation related integration and test events lead to the setup of our lab," Reynolds said. "The GEMNI lab was started in 2014 after a successful two-year partnership with the Project Management Office for Unmanned Aircraft Systems working on the Shadow UAS system. It is much faster and more cost effective to test navigation software and hardware in our lab prior to more expensive flight tests."
Serving as the lab's government lead since its inception, Reynolds and his team developed innovative techniques to assess Global Positioning System threats within a lab environment.
Modeling and simulation achievements included:
• Integration of the Gray Eagle six-degree-of-freedom simulation
• Development and integration of the simulation host which provides command/control and time synchronization along with simulated inertial data
• Integration and realization of a GPS Constellation Simulator
• Modeling and simulation of realistic GPS threat environments
• Integration of the triple redundant Gray Eagle navigation system depicted as the unit under test
"We are getting a lot of good attention for the hard work our navigation group has done," Reynolds said. "We will continue to push the boundaries for navigation systems integration and testing.
"As GPS degraded environments become realized, the GEMNI lab is on the forefront of understanding these threats and developing strategies to mitigate them. All of the lessons learned in this lab have a direct impact on the Warfighter," Overstreet said.
Each year select individuals and teams are recognized for exceptional work in the modeling and simulation field. Army Modeling and Simulation awards have been presented since 2003. The theme for this year's awards was best applications of Army models and simulations in an era of fiscal austerity and rapid innovation.
The award was presented at the Interservice/ Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference in December 2015 in Orlando, Florida.
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The U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center is part of the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command, which has the mission to ensure decisive overmatch for unified land operations to empower the Army, the joint warfighter and our nation. RDECOM is a major subordinate command of the U.S. Army Materiel Command.
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