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NEWS ARCHIVES
For Immediate Release
July 1, 2002
Making UAVs Smarter: Recent Test Demonstrates In-flight Ability to Reconfigure Low-level Control System Autonomously
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Recent world events have highlighted the utility of unmanned aerial vehicles
(UAVs) for both military and civilian applications. In manned aircraft,
the pilot is in control, functioning as the integrator of the on-board
subsystems and mitigating problems when they occur. With the advent of
UAVs, the human integrator capability is lost, which increases the probability
of aircraft loss and/or mission failure.
To address this and other related UAV control issues, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) have launched a major initiative to develop revolutionary new software-enabled control (SEC) systems with applications to intelligent UAVs.
The Boeing Phantom Works and the Georgia Institute of Technology recently demonstrated a key component of the SEC program: an Open Control Platform (OCP) designed to give future UAVs more capable flight control systems. In the demonstration - using the Georgia Tech test bed UAV helicopter, the GTMAX - the Open Control Platform successfully compensated for the simulated in-flight failure of a low-level flight control system by reconfiguring the SEC software systems autonomously.
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"This demonstration represents an important step toward the goal
of changing the way air vehicle control systems are designed," said
Daniel Schrage, a professor of aerospace engineering at Georgia Tech and
co-principal investigator for the project with George Vachtsevanos, a
Georgia Tech professor of electrical and computer engineering. "The
ultimate goal for the SEC program is to create a new paradigm for how
advances in information technology will be applied to control systems
for complex assets, like air vehicles."
The test demonstrated the ability of the OCP developed by the Boeing-led
team to coordinate sensing, flight control algorithms and actuators to
allow autonomous dynamic low-level flight control reconfiguration. It
was one of a series of technology demonstrations planned for completion
during the next two years on the GTMAX and a Boeing experimental platform
for the final experimentation. Future experiments are intended to demonstrate
extreme UAV performance and coordinated control of multiple vehicles in
the execution of a mission scenario.
The SEC program includes 16 organizations divided into SEC technology
developers of control-related algorithms and SEC developers of the software
infrastructure platform that enables the design and implementation of
such advanced control routines.
The Open Control Platform (OCP), a new object-oriented real time operating
software architecture, has been developed to meet this challenge. The
OCP developers are Boeing Phantom Works, Georgia Tech, Honeywell Laboratories,
and the University of California at Berkeley. The SEC technology developers
are California Institute of Technology, Cornell University, Georgia Tech,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, University
of Minnesota, Vanderbilt University, Oregon Research Institute, Draper
Labs, Northrop-Grumman Corporation, and Rockwell Science Center.
Researchers from more than a dozen organizations participating in the
SEC program will use the OCP's distributed processing, multi-platform
coordination and flexible reconfiguration capabilities to evaluate and
demonstrate the breakthrough control technologies they are developing.
The OCP will also provide a showcase for advances in future control capabilities,
including the ability to coordinate and control multiple UAVs from piloted
air vehicles.
The OCP is based on a real-time, distributed object-oriented system architecture
known as RT CORBA. While system fault tolerance still needs to be addressed
and is planned for initial demonstration this summer on the GTMAX system,
the OCP represents an advance in open systems able to handle large volumes
of data and computations in real time.
"One of the significant challenges is a required update rate of
100 Hz because of the dynamic nature of the helicopter system," Schrage
noted. "If you do this with an open, plug and play system, that normally
means sacrificing performance. Achieving this kind of performance from
the open control platform is a real milestone. But we still have a long
way to go in realizing the goals of this effort, including ensuring the
flight safety of these UAVs."
Beyond the reliability of responding to unexpected system faults, the
SEC program will also give the machines more agility, helping them to
avoid hostile actions without exceeding critical flight parameters. The
SEC team is developing algorithms to anticipate and avoid flight envelope
issues that operate through the OCP.
"Current UAVs are not robust enough to deal with all the circumstances
they may encounter," said Vachtsevanos. "The SEC program is
creating the enabling technologies to make this type of vehicle more reliable,
robust and truly autonomous."
The May 7 testing took place on the GTMAX system, a UAV helicopter test
bed based on the Yamaha RMAX remotely piloted helicopter that includes
a modular open systems avionics package along with the OCP. This modular
open system architecture test bed allows both software-in-the-loop and
hardware-in-the-loop testing, in addition to flight-testing. Thus, the
GTMAX provides a safe and very flexible method for testing advanced control
and sensing techniques.
In addition to Schrage and Vachtsevanos, the effort involves Eric Johnson,
J.V.R Prasad, Bonnie Heck and Linda Wills of Georgia Tech, along with
David Corman, Jim Paunicka, Brian Mendel and Eric Martens of Boeing Phantom
Works.
The SEC program plans a number of progressive technology demonstrations over the next two years. While the May 7 benchmark demonstration was a major accomplishment, Schrage said, the additional planned demonstrations will go a long way to transferring the SEC technologies, including the OCP, to the UAV community.
RESEARCH NEWS & PUBLICATIONS OFFICE
Georgia Institute of Technology
75 Fifth Street, N.W., Suite 100
Atlanta, Georgia 30308 USA
MEDIA RELATIONS CONTACTS:
John Toon (404-894-6986); E-mail:
john.toon@edi.gatech.edu; Fax: (404-894-4545) or Jane Sanders (404-894-2214);
E-mail: jane.sanders@edi.gatech.edu.
TECHNICAL CONTACTS: Dan Schrage (404-894-6257); E-mail: daniel.schrage@aerospace.gatech.edu or George Vachtsevanos (404-894-6252); E-mail: george.vachtsevanos@ece.gatech.edu.