Copyright © 2026 Authors retain the copyright of this article. This article is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

@article{199123,
        author = {Arjun Kaushal and Rabinder Henry},
        title = {ASM Tango: A Visual-Inertial Man-Out-of-the-Loop Guidance Architecture for GPS-Denied Autonomous Aerial Platforms},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2026},
        volume = {12},
        number = {11},
        pages = {14963-14968},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=199123},
        abstract = {ASM Tango is a subsonic, modular autonomous aerial demonstrator designed to validate a Man-Out-of-the-Loop (MOOTL) guidance architecture under GPS-denied, communications-denied operational conditions. The platform integrates a 3D-printed aerodynamic airframe with two independent perception layers—Visual and Orientational—to be arbitrated by a centralized root sensor fusion engine. The Visual layer employs a Parent-Child configuration: the Parent layer performs real-time object detection and target classification via onboard neural inference; the Child layer provides pixel-level thermal-optical cross-validation to detect adversarial infrared manipulation at the detection level, upstream of any guidance decision. The Orientational layer maintains continuous six-degree-of-freedom inertial and attitude state. Individual perception components have been validated in controlled environments. Root fusion integration via Software-in-the-Loop simulation is the active development frontier. The graceful-degradation architecture—sustaining guidance integrity under single-layer denial—presents direct applicability to autonomous space-grade GNC systems where GPS is permanently absent.},
        keywords = {MOOTL guidance, GPS-denied navigation, visual- inertial fusion, IR cross-validation, autonomous aerial systems},
        month = {April},
        }