A long-term project to give unmanned air vehicles the intelligence to avoid air threats autonomously has shown that a decision to take an evasive flight path that is compatible with a vehicle's own flight envelope could be reached within 100 milliseconds.
The development of such a flight control software algorithm was demonstrated at the 19th Bristol International Unmanned Air Vehicle Systems Conference on 30 March. The demonstration flight model showed graphically a triangular UAV "decide" and begin to move to avoid an incoming ellipse in 100 milliseconds. That ellipse, one of several geometries shown including spinning ellipses, represented the airspace to be avoided for a safe manoeuvre.
Qinetiq's Malvern-based senior mathematician Richard Penney is the lead researcher on the UK Ministry of Defence-funded project. He says that while avoiding a simple moving object that could collide with your aircraft, "avoiding anything that can track you would be much more difficult".
Such a tracking threat could be another aircraft or a surface-to-air missile (SAM). Such a manoeuvring object would be described as an expanding elliptical volume within the flight model. This, says Penney, would represent a far more difficult challenge. He declined to comment on how an algorithm- equipped UAV could avoid a SAM because his research is for the MoD.
The algorithm research has been ongoing for two years and Penney expects it to be at least another five before his work could lead to any actual vehicle testing. The next stage for him will be the incorporation of terrain data within the flight model.
Source: Flight International
