22nd Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, Harrogate, UK, 28 August - 1st September, 2000
Paper ICAS 2000-6.6.1

RAPID ON BOARD PROTOTYPING OF NEAR OPTIMAL SPATIAL TRAJECTORIES FOR PILOT'S ASSOCIATE

O. A. Yakimenko
Aviation and Aeronautics Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia & Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA, USA

Keywords: pilot’s associate, road-in-the-sky, trajectory optimization and rapid prototyping

The paper deals with a concept, mathematical foundation and results of testing a prototype of onboard system providing an aid for pilot's control actions during more or less long-term manoeuvres, such as takeoff/climbing, waypoint flight through the threat zones, surface-based and air target attack, descent and landing approach. The key issue of this system is to provide an algorithm allowing on-line prototyping of spatial trajectories for these manoeuvres and visualisation of the reference trajectories to a pilot on 3-D flightpath display for further tracking. As an efficient tool for onboard optimisation the, present paper considers different modifications of a direct method of calculus of variations, implemented to the tasks of flight dynamics first time by Prof. Taranenko in the early 60’s. The paper contains a brief survey of the methods used so far by the other researches in the field, discloses main ideas of proposed approach, based on independent optimisation of a trajectory and speed profile, shows how to assure a required convergence robustness. The paper is concluded with the reference to the semi-natural and flight test of the proposed system prototype, carried out in Russia in mid 90’s in Zhukovskiy Air Force Engineering Academy and Gromov Flight-Test Institute.

view full paper