This research describes a Hardware in the Loop Simulator (HILS) that was developed to enhance the quality of attitude data received from autopilots. The described system aided in adjusting the contribution of individual IMU sensors and thereby improved the accuracy of IMU data. The HILS system outlined in this research is a gimbaled platform equipped with four stepper motors and two optical sha...

The application of a new nonlinear robust control strategy to the design of missile autopilots is presented. The control approach described and demonstrated here is based upon the numerical solution of the Hamilton-Jacobi-Isaacs equation by Successive Galerkin Approximation. Using this approach, feedback controllers are computed by an iterative application of a numerical Galerkin-type PDE solve...

This objective of this article is to give an overview of autopilot software design for small and miniature unmanned air systems. An architecture that is typical of commercially available autopilots is described. A detailed explanation of the inner-loop control structure is described, including the lateral directional feedback loops and the longitudinal directional feedback loops. We give a brie...

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...

Previously, we have looked at the stability augmentation system. This system can be seen as the inner loop of the aircraft control system. In this chapter, we focus on the outer loop: the control augmentation system. When we want to keep a certain pitch angle, velocity, roll angle, heading, or something similar, then we use the CAS. In this way, the pilot workload can be reduced significantly. ...

Equipping a fixed wing unmanned air vehicle (UAV) with low-level autopilots, we derive high-level velocity and roll angle control laws for the UAV. Backstepping techniques are applied to design the velocity and roll angle control laws from known velocity and heading angle control laws that explicitly account for velocity and heading rate constraints of the UAV. Regarding unknown autopilot const...

The objective of this paper is to describe the design and implementation of a small semiautonomous fixed-wing unmanned air vehicle. In particular we describe the hardware and software architectures used in the design. We also describe a low weight, low cost autopilot developed at Brigham Young University and the algorithms associated with the autopilot. Novel PDA and voice interfaces to the UAV...

A paper describes a method of motion control of the underwater robotic vehicle to the problem of trajectory tracking. A multidimensional non-linear model expresses the robot’s dynamics. Command signals are generated by an autopilot consisting of three independent controllers with a parameter adaptation law implemented. A quality of control is concerned without and in presence of environmental d...