AHS International – The Vertical Flight Technical Society announced today the winner of the Society’s prestigious Alfred Gessow Award for the best technical paper presented at the AHS International Annual Forum. The award consists of a plaque and payment of transportation costs for one author to present the paper at the annual European Rotorcraft Forum (ERF).

The winning paper is “Flight Test Results for Autonomous Obstacle Field Navigation and Landing Site Selection on the RASCAL JUH-60A,” written by Matthew Whalley, Marc Takahashi, Jay Fletcher, Ernesto Moralez III, Carl Ott, and Michael Olmstead, US Army AFDD; Chad L. Goerzen and Gregory J. Schulein, San Jose State University; James C. Savage, AFRL; and Hoyt N. Burns and Bill Conrad, H.N. Burns Engineering Corp. The paper is available for sale in the AHS Online Store.

The selection process was rigorous. Session chairs selected more than 250 papers from the more than 325 abstracts received. At the Forum, the session chairs and technical committee chairs selected the 20 best papers for final consideration. Then the Deputy Technical Directors for Aeromechanics, Vehicle Design, Vehicle Integrity, System Integration, Systems Engineering and Operations and Product Support winnowed that number down to nine papers. The AHS International Technical Director evaluated and ranked the papers, selecting the winning paper as the best at Forum 69.

This year’s 69th Annual Forum and Technology Display was held on May 21-23, 2013 in Phoenix, Arizona. The paper and the 21 runners-up are available on the AHS Online Store – more details can be found at http://vtol.org/forum-69-best-papers.

The lead author, Matt Whalley of the U.S. Army’s Aeroflightdynamics Directorate is invited to present the paper at the ERF in Moscow, Russia on September 4, 2013, where he will also receive the Alfred Gessow plaque. The award is named after Alfred Gessow, a helicopter pioneer, researcher, author, professor and founder of the rotorcraft center at the University of Maryland now named for him.

The American Helicopter Society (AHS) International is the world’s premier vertical flight technical society. Since its inception in 1943, AHS has been a major force in the advancement of vertical flight. The Society is the global resource for information on vertical flight technology. It provides global leadership for scientific, technical, educational and legislative initiatives that advance the state-of-the-art of vertical flight.