NASA AND THE US Air Force have unveiled an aircraft equipped with a computerised flight-control system designed to "learn as it flies", which could eventually be used to control ultra-high-speed aircraft.
The 2.54m-long aircraft, called the Low-Observable Flight Test Experiment (LoFLYTE), has been developed by Accurate Automation of Tennessee for NASA and the USAF. The test programme is being carried out in conjunction with NASA Langley Research Center in Virginia and the Air Force Wright Laboratory in Ohio, under the Small Business Innovative Research programme.
The LoFLYTE aircraft will be used to explore new flight-control techniques involving computer neural networks, which allow the aircraft's control system to learn by mimicking the pilot. It is based on a Mach 5 "wave-rider" concept - a hypersonic aircraft powered by air-breathing engines which is designed to cruise on top of its own shock wave. Initial flight tests will be performed at subsonic speeds and will explore take-off and landing characteristics.
The aircraft's flight-control system consists of a network of neural chips, able continually to alter the aircraft's control laws to optimise flight performance and take a pilot's responses into consideration.
"We see a big advantage to using this type of control system in a hypersonic vehicle," says Robert Pegg of NASA Langley's Hypersonic Vehicles Office.
"At those high speeds, things happen so quickly that the pilot cannot control the aircraft as easily as at subsonic speeds," he adds.
Source: Flight International