Several control systems in safety-critical applications involve the interaction of an autonomous controller with one or more human operators. Examples include pilots interacting with an autopilot system in an aircraft, and a driver interacting with automated driver-assistance features in an automobile. The correctness of such systems depends not only on the autonomous controller, but also on th...

A comprehensive design procedure based on extremum seeking for minimum power demand formation  ight is presented, the Ž rst with performance guarantees. The procedure involves the design of a new wake robust formation hold autopilot and transformation of the closed-loop aircraft dynamics to a form in which a newly available rigorous design procedure for extremum seeking is applicable. The desi...

Effective design of autopilots for fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is still a great challenge, due to unmodeled effects and uncertainties that these exhibit during flight. Unmodeled comprise longitudinal/lateral cross-couplings, as well poor knowledge equilibrium points (trimming points) the UAV dynamics. The main contribution this article new adaptive autopilot design, based on unce...

This paper presents the autonomous micro aerial vehicle pilot, a new autopilot platform weighing 6.25 g and measuring 11.3 cm2, specifically designed for use on micro/miniature aerial vehicle mobile sensing platforms. An overview of the hardware, firmware, ground station, and validation testing used to demonstrate this autopilot as a viable research instrument for atmospheric thermodynamic sens...

The first flight test phase of the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center Autonomous Formation Flight project has successfully demonstrated precision autonomous station-keeping of an F/A-18 research airplane with a second F/A-18 airplane. Blended inertial navigation system (INS) and global positioning system (GPS) measurements have been communicated across an air-to-air telemetry link and used to c...

Although formal methods for developing computer systems have been available for more than a decade, few have had signi cant impact in practice. A major barrier to their use is that developers nd formal methods di cult to understand and apply. One exception is a formal method called SCR for specifying computer system requirements which, due to its easy-to-use tabular notation and demonstrated sc...

The Parrot AR drone 2 is a commercially available quad rotor with many sensors onboard, such as two cameras, accelerometers, gyrometers, barometer, and a magnetometer. Recently, a GPS-module has become available, which can be used to geo-tag images. We have adapted the particularly versatile and powerful Paparazzi open source autopilot for use with the Parrot AR drone. Hence, just by uploading ...

To satisfy the increasing demand for safer critical systems, engineers have integrated higher levels of automation, such as glass cockpits in aircraft, power plants, and driverless cars. These guiding principles relegate the operator to a monitoring role, increasing risks for humans to lack system understanding. The out of the loop performance problem arises when operators suffer from complacen...

An autopilot is a mechanical, electrical, or hydraulic system used to guide an aerial vehicle without assistance from a human being. It also maintains the orientation of the plane by monitoring the relevant flight data from inertial measurement instruments and then using that data to cause corrective actions. In this project an attempt has been made to design, implement and develop an autopilot...

This paper presents an introduction to capturing software requirements in the PVS formal language. The object of study is a simpli ed digital autopilot that was motivated in part by the mode control panel of NASA Langley's Boeing 737 research aircraft. The paper rst presents the requirements for this autopilot in English and then steps the reader through a translation of these requirements into...