Some program participants believe that neither the content of the flight test program (what was done) nor its approach (how it was done) was greatly affected by its acquisition strategy. These participants assert that test program management would have been similar under a traditional acquisition approach. Indeed, evidence suggests that the dominant influence on the pace and structure of the te...

An adaptive backstepping approach is used to control the longitudinal dynamics of an Unmanned Air Vehicle (UAV). The nonlinear controller designed makes the system follow references in the aerodynamic velocity and flight path angle, using the elevator deflections and the thrust as actuators. Moreover, the (global) solution is valid for all the flight envelope, since it is based on a general non...

A detailed investigation including a low-speed flow study is presented on the development of ultra-light dragonfly mimetic flying robots with a focus on the dragonfly’s remarkable gliding capability. It is revealed that the dragonfly’s corrugated wing structure and cruciform configuration provide superior flying characteristics for fixed wing robots in low Reynolds number flight. It was also fo...

On August 25, 2004, a series of final experiments were flown at the McKenna urban operations complex at Ft. Benning, GA. These experiments represented the culmination of the rotary wing segment of the DARPA Software Enabled Control program. To support these efforts, an open system Unmanned Aerial Vehicle testbed architecture was developed for the GTMax and GTSpy research aircraft. This paper in...

Unmanned small autonomous helicopters can perform aggressive maneuvers that will be useful for operations in challenging conditions. This paper presents an analysis of the pilot’s execution of aggressive maneuvers from flight test data, collected on an instrumented small-scale acrobatic helicopter. A full-envelope nonlinear dynamic model of the helicopter was developed and validated for aggress...

Submerged inlet has been widely used in UAVs and cruise missiles due to its good stealth characteristics, but it also brings the disadvantage of poor aerodynamic characteristics. Especially large maneuvering flight, flow field near fuselage a strong unsteady effect, total pressure recovery coefficient distortion characteristics have deteriorated sharply. In order investigate steady transient su...

& 2016 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. Electronic supplementary material is available online at https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/ m9.figshare.c.3577829. Bioinspired morphing wings for extended flight ...

This paper describes an approach to the problem of optimal motion planning with uncertain dynamics. This problem can occur whenever a vehicle suffers damage or when the environment makes the effect of motion actions unpredictable and potentially risky. We address in particular the case of aircraft with structural and/or control surface damage. The goal in this problem is to find an optimal plan...

The hovering ability, rapidity of maneuvers and upregulated aerobic capacity of hummingbirds have long attracted the interest of flight biologists. The range of intra- and interspecific variation in flight performance among hummingbirds, however, is equally impressive. A dominant theme in hummingbird evolution is progressive invasion of higher-elevation habitats. Hypobaric challenge is met beha...