57 results about "Flight computer" patented technology

An unmanned aerial vehicle and associated methods for inspecting infrastructure assets includes a multirotor, electrically driven helicopter apparatus and power supply; a flight computer; positioning and collision avoidance equipment; and at least one sensor such as a camera. The flight computer is programmed for automated travel to and inspection of selected waypoints, at which condition data is collected for further analysis. The method also includes protocols for segmenting the flight path to accomplish sequential inspection of a linear asset such as a power line using limited-range equipment.

An automated flight control system for an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), comprising a flight computer for managing functions related to a flight of the UAV, an application processor for managing functions on the UAV not related to flight, a flight data recorder to record data related to a flight of the UAV, an attitude and heading reference system, a global navigation satellite system receiver, a self-separation module for communicating with another aircraft for the purpose of avoiding a collision, and a wireless communications module for communicating with the remote system, wherein the automated flight control system is capable of receiving operational instructions via the wireless communications module from the remote system.

A vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft is provided and includes a fuselage, wings extending outwardly from the fuselage to define a wing plane and a prop-rotor operably disposed to generate thrust, a flight computer and controllable surfaces disposed on at least one of the fuselage, the wings and the prop-rotor. The controllable surfaces are controllable by the flight computer to position the wing plane in accordance with a predominant local wind direction.

An autonomous guided parachute system for cargo drops that divides the requirements of guidance and soft landing into separate parachutes. Said invention includes a high wing-loaded ram air parachute for guidance, a larger round parachute for soft landing, a harness/container system, flight computer, position sensors and actuation system. The system is dropped from an airplane. A predetermined period of drogue fall ensures a stable position prior to deploying the guidance parachute. The flight controller determines a heading to intersect with an area substantially above the desired target and controls the guidance parachute via pneumatic actuators connected to the parachutes steering lines to fly on that heading. At a minimum altitude prior to the system's impact with the ground the flight computer transitions the system from the fast high performance guidance parachute to a larger landing parachute by releasing the guidance parachute to static line extract and deploy the landing parachute. If the system reaches a position substantially above target area prior to the parachute transition altitude the flight computer controls the system into a spiral dive or other rapid altitude dropping maneuver until the transition altitude is reached. Once transitioned to the landing parachute the system descends for a brief period unguided under the landing parachute until touchdown.

Systems and methods for asynchronous multi-channel data communications are provided. An embodiment of the invention includes a minimum of three channels for digital computation in Primary Flight Computers and four channels for digital/analog conversion in Actuation Control Electronics. Each channel (Primary Flight Computer or Actuation Control Electronics) contains two computation lanes with dissimilar processors and compilers. Hence with dual-dissimilar processors the computer architecture is fail-passive to generic errors. The two Actuation Control Electronics computation lanes select the digital control data of one of the two computation lanes of one of the three digital computation channels for conversion and transmission to associated actuators.

The invention discloses a method for predicting residual service life of a flight control computer system, which comprises the steps of: storing historical reliability data of the flight control computer system by using an onboard health monitoring computer, obtaining working state data, and executing failure detection, reliability analysis and service life prediction of the flight control computer by using a fuzzy expert system. The working state data is obtained from a state sensor group. The development of the fuzzy expert system is used for modeling the reliability of the flight computer system, and the working condition of the flight control computer system is estimated according to the working state data and the fuzzy based reasoning for carrying out failure detection and predicting residual service life. The invention has the advantage of being capable of estimating the residual service life of the flight control computer system on line.

The invention discloses a deep-space three-axle stable attitude directional control method, based on operation mode, belonging to an attitude control method of space aircraft, wherein said method comprises: the space aircraft with automatic navigation function, via flying computer, receives the reference directional mission and auxiliary directional mission; the flying computer, according to the aircraft track supported by navigation system and the track of target heavenly body obtained by astronomical ephemeris interpolation, finds the attitude operation process meet the demand of said mission, as the reference attitude track; and uses attitude track control rule, via the attitude interface unit, to drive the attitude executer of aircraft, to realize needed attitude. The invention can improve the automatic degree.

A system providing mid-value selection (MVS) for control command output in a fly-by-wire system where the fly-by-wire systems includes a plurality of primary flight computers (PFCs) receiving data through integrated flight control buses from actuation control electronics (ACE) for flight crew and status sensor inputs, the PFCs providing data through the flight control buses to the ACE for control signal output, provides elements for receiving in an ACE data from each PFC and receiving a data valid signal with respect to each PFC. Fresh data for each PFC is selected as the data received or past MVS output responsive to the respective data valid signal. Based on a predetermined criterion the system chooses from the PFC fresh data a selected set of PFC fresh data as the MVS output and stores the MVS output for use.

An integrated inertial stellar attitude sensor for an aerospace vehicle includes a star camera system, a gyroscope system, a controller system for synchronously integrating an output of said star camera system and an output of said gyroscope system into a stream of data, and a flight computer responsive to said stream of data for determining from the star camera system output and the gyroscope system output the attitude of the aerospace vehicle.

An electric flight control surface actuation system is implemented using a low level control section and a high power section. The low level control section is disposed within an electronics bay within the aircraft, and is in operable communication with one or more flight computers via a communication bus. The flight computers supply flight control surface position commands to the low level control section, which in turn transmits actuator commands to the high power section via a plurality of redundant communication links. The high power section is disposed remotely from the low level control section and, in addition to being in operable communication with the low level control section, is coupled to an aircraft power bus and to each of the actuators. The high power section receives the actuator position commands transmitted from the low level control section and, in response, selectively energizes the actuators from the aircraft power bus.

An autonomous guided parachute system for cargo drops that divides the requirements of guidance and soft landing into separate parachutes. Said invention includes a high wing-loaded ram air parachute for guidance, a larger round parachute for soft landing, a harness/container system, flight computer, position sensors and actuation system. The system is dropped from an airplane. A predetermined period of drogue fall ensures a stable position prior to deploying the guidance parachute. The flight controller determines a heading to intersect with an area substantially above the desired target and controls the guidance parachute via pneumatic actuators connected to the parachutes steering lines to fly on that heading. At a minimum altitude prior to the system's impact with the ground the flight computer transitions the system from the fast high performance guidance parachute to a larger landing parachute by releasing the guidance parachute to static line extract and deploy the landing parachute. If the system reaches a position substantially above target area prior to the parachute transition altitude the flight computer controls the system into a spiral dive or other rapid altitude dropping maneuver until the transition altitude is reached. Once transitioned to the landing parachute the system descends for a brief period unguided under the landing parachute until touchdown.

A method is provided whereby airplanes or any device with the functionality and usefulness of an airplane may be controlled without the use of any traditional effectors, such as flaps, rudders, ailerons, spoilers, and all like hinged, moveable airfoils attached to a wing or a fuselage. The means of controlling such airplanes while in flight will be by controlling the laminar air flow over all lifting surfaces so as to vary the amount and quality of the lift provided. All lifting surfaces on the airplane will be divided into dozens, hundreds, or thousands of small zones, each of which can be readily controlled by a central flight computer and each of which is capable of modifying its immediate airflow condition, whether that be laminar flow or some particular degree and variety of local eddy current. Summing over all the inputs of conditions above the multitude of zones, the central flight computer will possess algorithms and programs suitable to effect any desired change in attitude, altitude, orientation, and course of the airplane that is desired.

A navigational computer design for high altitude and other similar navigational needs includes a processor, which receives as input signals from navigational and navigational related sensors such as a GPS, compass, inertial measurement unit and sensors. Processor utilizes the navigational information to provide a display to the user indicating present navigational positional information as well is providing a flight path to follow to the target. The navigational computer includes a device that enables it to operate in a peer-to-peer network with other similar navigational computers such that during use, users may track one another. Once on the ground, the navigational computer may be used to continue navigation.

A store ejector is adapted for in-flight adjustment of the pitch attitude imparted to a store by a pair of ejector pistons. The pitch attitude of the store is adjustable to correspond to a flight condition of the aircraft at time of store release. The aircraft has a flight computer that provides store release pitch data corresponding to the aircraft flight conditions. The store ejector includes an orificing assembly that varies the flow of pressurized gas to the ejector pistons by translating a mandrel within a bore formed in the orificing assembly. Orifices within the bore are adjusted to apportion the flow of pressurized gas to the ejector pistons in accordance with an optimum orifice setting corresponding to the desired pitch attitude of the store for the given flight condition.

A method of controlling an aircraft electrical system (40). The electrical system (40) comprises an alternating current electrical machine (56, 58) comprising a plurality of phases, each phase having a power rating, the electrical machine (56, 58) being configured to operate on failure of one or more phases. The method comprises: determining a power requirement; sensing a fault of one or more phases of the electrical machine (56, 58), and controlling the electrical machine (56, 58) to operate in a fault condition, in which the remaining phases of the electrical machine (56, 58) provide the electrical power requirement; and providing an overrating signal to a flight computer (66) of the aircraft (2) where the power provided by each phase exceeds the power rating of the respective phase.

An apparatus and method for aggregating health management information includes an aircraft having a flight computer coupled to a plurality of aircraft systems. Each system has a built in test (BIT) protocol that self-diagnoses a health of the system and outputs corresponding BIT data to the flight computer for contemporaneous display on a flight display.

The technology relates to navigating aerial vehicles using deep reinforcement learning techniques to generate flight policies. An operational system for controlling flight of an aerial vehicle may include a computing system configured to process an input vector representing a state of the aerial vehicle and output an action, an operation-ready policies server configured to store a trained neural network encoding a learned flight policy, and a controller configured to control the aerial vehicle. The input vector may be processed using the trained neural network encoding the learned flight policy. A method for navigating an aerial vehicle may include selecting a trained neural network encoding a learned flight policy from an operation policies server, generating an input vector comprising a set of characteristics representing a state of the aerial vehicle, selecting an action, by the trained neural network, based on the input vector, converting the action into a set of commands, by a flight computer, the set of commands configured to cause the aerial vehicle to perform the action, and causing, by a controller, the aerial vehicle to perform the action using the set of commands.

A helicopter is provided and includes an air frame formed to accommodate a pilot, flight control elements disposed on the airframe to generate lift and thrust in accordance with control commands issued by the pilot and a current control mode, a sensor disposed on the airframe to sense helicopter proximity to terrain and obstacles and a flight computer configured to change the current control mode based on sensed helicopter proximity to the terrain and the obstacles.