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The purpose of this research is to propose a novel method to plan paths of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) formations. This is to make use of the aerodynamic advantage of formation flight to reduce energy consumption of UAVs.

The method proposed in this research make use of the fact that, under certain conditions, the regions where if a UAV rendezvous or separates with another UAV would save energy by formation flying can be analytically calculated. The intersections of these regions are used to decide which UAV are to fly in the same formation. This combination of which UAV are to fly together and what order they join/part from the formation is called the topology of the problem.

The proposed method was proved to be effective in identifying efficient topologies, with the majority of the topologies selected falling below 5 percent error rate in terms of energy.

The originality of this research lies in the fact that the proposed method is completely visualised – all the necessary information to organise formations is visualised in the envelopes. Still, the proposed method was proved to be effective in selecting efficient topologies.

The purpose of this paper is to present the research into fault detection and isolation (FDI) and evaluation of the reduction of performance after failures occurred in the flight control system (FCS) during its mission operation.

The FDI is accomplished via using the multiple models scheme which is developed based on the Extend Kalman Filter (EKF) algorithm. Towards this objective, the healthy mode of the FCS under different type of failures, including the control surfaces and structural, should be considered. It developed a bank of extended multiple models adaptive estimation (EMMAE) to detect and isolate the above mentioned failures in the FCS. In addition, the performances including the flight envelope, the voyage and endurance in cruising are proposed to reference and evaluate the process of mission, especially for UAV under failure conditions.

The contribution of this paper is to provide the information not only about the failures, but also considering whether the UAV can accomplish the task for the ground station.

The main contribution of this paper is in the areas of the structural and control surface faults researching, which are occurred in the mission procedures and emphasized the identification of those failures' magnitudes. The FDI scheme includes the performance evaluation, while the evaluation obtained through the extensive numerical simulations and saved in the offline database. As a consequence, it is more accurate and less computationally demanding while evaluating the performance.

This paper aims to propose a nonlinear model for aeroelastic aircraft that can predict the flight parameters throughout the investigated flight envelopes.

A system identification method based on the support vector machine (SVM) is developed and applied to the nonlinear dynamics of an aeroelastic aircraft. In the proposed non-parametric gray-box method, force and moment coefficients are estimated based on the state variables, flight conditions and control commands. Then, flight parameters are estimated using aircraft equations of motion. Nonlinear system identification is performed using the SVM network by minimizing errors between the calculated and estimated force and moment coefficients. To that end, a least squares algorithm is used as the training rule to optimize the generalization bound given for the regression.

The results confirm that the SVM is successful at the aircraft system identification. The precision of the SVM model is preserved when the models are excited by input commands different from the training ones. Also, the generalization of the SVM model is acceptable at non-trained flight conditions within the trained flight conditions. Considering the precision and generalization of the model, the results indicate that the SVM is more successful than the well-known methods such as artificial neural networks.

In this paper, both the simulated and real flight data of the F/A-18 aircraft are used to provide aeroelastic models for its lateral-directional dynamics.

This paper proposes a non-parametric system identification method for aeroelastic aircraft based on the SVM method for the first time. Up to the author’s best knowledge, the SVM is not used for the aircraft system identification or the aircraft parameter estimation until now.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the general idea, design, and implementation of control system for general aviation aircraft which reduces pilot workload.

Proposed indirect flight control system framework is intended to simplify piloting, reduce pilot workload, and allow low‐end general aviation aircraft to operate under deteriorated meteorological conditions. Classical control theory is used for the design of the flight control laws. Although not inherently robust, controllers with classical control logic are made sufficiently stable using a correct and updated controller structure.

Despite controversies between perception of a modern manned aerial vehicle and limitations imposed by legacy airworthiness codes it is shown that a pilot workload reducing system can be successfully implemented onboard of a low‐end general aviation aircraft.

Hi‐level control laws and optimization of handling qualities can lead to unfavourable and unpredictable forms of man‐machine interactions, e.g. pilot‐induced oscillations.

General aviation aircraft are mostly flown by a single pilot, who could benefit from an intelligent system or “virtual copilot” assisting in or supervising the aircraft's safe operation under any conditions. Aircraft with this capability represents a next step in the evolution that might ultimately lead to trajectory‐based free‐flight concept of aircraft operations.

The paper introduces a safety enhanced digital flight control system on board small general aviation aircraft.

AS background, I want to go back into history and say that ARB staff have been actively engaged in SST airworthiness discussions and research both within the ARB and with Government establishments since 1956. This work led to the formation within the ARB of the Supersonic Aircraft Airworthiness Committee early in 1960, out of which was formed the embryo of what has now become the joint Anglo‐French airworthiness requirements for the SST, the TSS Standards, with which probably many of you are familiar. Work was able to start on these Standards, thanks to the foresight of those responsible for the formation of the early Committee, within a month or so of the joint Governmental decision between Britain and France to go ahead with the Concorde project. The aim in producing the joint Standards has been to present the manufacturers with a common code against which the aircraft can be certified in both countries. The ultimate aim will be to certificate simultaneously, both in Britain and France, Concordes built to identical standards. Thus we hope to make life easier for both the manufacturers and operators, since even re‐sale — if you can imagine a secondhand Concorde — will be easier because it won't involve fundamental certification problems. Additionally, a vast amount of work has been done between the USA, Britain and France in an attempt to achieve identical standards in America. This has largely been very successful and the manufacturers are now aware of the standards needed to make an aeroplane that will be acceptable to all three authorities.

The purpose of this paper is to present the synthesis of a robust controller for autonomous small‐scale helicopter hovering control using extended H_∞ loop shaping design techniques.

This work presents the development of a robust controller for smooth hovering operation required for many autonomous helicopter operations using H_∞ loop shaping technique incorporating the Vinnicombe‐gap (v‐gap) metric for validation of robustness to uncertainties due to parameter variation in the system model. Simulation study was conducted to evaluate the performance of the designed controller for robust stability to uncertainty, disturbance rejection, and time‐domain response in line with ADS‐33E level 1 requirements.

The proposed techniques for a robust controller exhibit an effective performance for both nominal plant and 20 percent variation in the nominal parameters in terms of robustness to uncertainty, disturbance wind gust attenuation up to 95 percent, and transient performance in compliance with ADS‐33E level 1 specifications.

The controller is limited to hovering and low‐speed flight envelope.

This is expected to provide efficient hovering/low‐speed autonomous helicopter flight control required in many civilian unmanned aerial vehicles applications. Also, the technique can be used to simplify the number of robust gain‐scheduled linear controllers required for wide‐envelope flight.

The research will facilitate the deployment of low cost, small‐scale autonomous helicopters in various civilian applications.

The research addresses the challenges of parametric variation inherent in helicopter hovering/low‐speed control using an extended H_∞ loop shaping technique with v‐gap metric.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a novel Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle (UCAV) flight controller parameters identification method, which is based on predator-prey Biogeography-Based Optimization (PPBBO) algorithm, with the objective of optimizing the whole UCAV system design process.

The hybrid model of predator-prey theory and biogeography-based optimization (BBO) algorithm is established for parameters identification of UCAV. This proposed method identifies controller parameters and reduces the computational complexity.

The basic BBO is improved by modifying the search strategy and adding some limits, so that it can be better applied to the parameters identification problem. Comparative experimental results demonstrated the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method: it can guarantee finding the optimal controller parameters, with the rapid convergence.

The proposed PPBBO algorithm can be easily applied to practice and can help the design of the UCAV flight control system, which will considerably increase the autonomy of the UCAV.

A hybrid model of predator-prey theory and BBO algorithm is proposed for parameters identification of UCAV, and a PPBBO-based software platform for UCAV controller design is also developed.

THE in‐flight recording of parameters relating to: altitude, heading, vertical acceleration, indicated air speed and pitch attitude, and their subsequent analyses by ground replay equipment, has been established for some years. The recording of this data was made mandatory by the regulatory authorities so that post‐incident analysis would reveal, with accuracy, the causes of an accident.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a multiobjective differential evolution (MODE)-based extended H-infinity controller for autonomous helicopter control.

Development of a MATLAB-based MODE suitable for controller synthesis. Formulate the H-infinity control scheme as an extended H-infinity loop shaping design procedure (H _∞ -LSDP) with incorporation of v-gap metric for robustness to parametric variation. Then apply the MODE-based algorithm to optimize the weighting function of the control problem formulation for optimal performance.

The proposed optimized H-infinity control was able to yield set of Pareto-controller candidates with optimal compromise between conflicting stability and time-domain performances required in autonomous helicopter deployment. The result of performance evaluation shows robustness to parameter variation of up to 20 per cent variation in nominal values, and in addition provides satisfactory disturbance rejection to wind disturbance in all the three axes.

The formulated H-infinity controller is limited to hovering and low speed flight envelope. The optimization is focused on weighting function parameters for a given fixed weighting function structure. This thus requires a priori selection of weighting structures.

The proposed MODE-infinity controller algorithm is expected to ease the design and deployment of the robust controller in autonomous helicopter application especially for practicing engineer with little experience in advance control parameters tuning. Also, it is expected to reduce the design cycle involved in autonomous helicopter development. In addition, the synthesized robust controller will provide effective hovering/low speed autonomous helicopter flight control required in many civilian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) applications.

The research will facilitate the deployment of low-cost, small-scale autonomous helicopter in various civilian applications.

The research addresses the challenges involved in selection of weighting function parameters for H-infinity control synthesis to satisfy conflicting stability and time-domain objectives. The problem of population initialization and objectives function computation in the conventional MODE algorithm are addressed to ensure suitability of the optimization algorithm in the formulated H-infinity controller synthesis.