Aircraft Command Prioritization for Over-Actuated Flight Control
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional flight control systems for over-actuated aircraft, such as VTOLs, face challenges in control complexity due to a large number of control surfaces exceeding the number of axes of motion, making pre-calculated look-up tables impractical and requiring computationally intensive real-time command calculations.
Innovation Solution
A computer-implemented method for command prioritization and optimization in aircraft, involving a prioritization function to determine the execution priority between airspeed and climb based on assigned weights, with saturation checks and optimization algorithms to generate actuator commands, using a flight control system with processors and actuators.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If pre-calculated look-up tables are used for flight control, then control implementation is simplified, but this approach becomes impractical and unfeasible for over-actuated aircraft with multiple control surfaces
Solution Approach 1:
The control problem is segmented into two distinct layers: an outer loop allocation layer that determines optimal control surface assignments based on aircraft state and pilot commands, and an inner loop execution layer that implements the allocated commands. This segmentation allows the system to handle over-actuated configurations dynamically without requiring comprehensive pre-calculated look-up tables for all possible scenarios.
Solution Approach 2:
The system transitions from static pre-calculated look-up tables to dynamic real-time optimization. The outer loop allocation continuously calculates optimal control surface assignments based on current aircraft state, ensuring adaptability to over-actuated configurations while maintaining computational feasibility through structured optimization approaches.
2Device complexity
If conventional look-up tables are used, then control system complexity is reduced, but they become completely impractical for over-actuated aircraft with large number of control surfaces
Solution Approach 1:
The control architecture is divided into outer loop allocation and inner loop execution, where the outer loop handles the complex optimization of control surface assignments for over-actuated aircraft, while the inner loop implements straightforward command execution. This segmentation manages complexity by isolating the computational burden to specific modules.
Solution Approach 2:
The outer loop allocation acts as an intermediary between pilot commands and control surface actuators. It translates high-level commands into optimized actuator commands by solving the control allocation problem, thereby enabling conventional simple execution mechanisms to work effectively with complex over-actuated aircraft configurations.
3Reliability
If real-time command calculations and optimization are performed, then dynamic adaptability and command execution accuracy are improved, but energy costs and computational requirements increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The control system is segmented into outer loop allocation that performs real-time optimization and inner loop execution that implements commands without additional optimization. This segmentation concentrates computational energy costs in the outer loop while keeping the inner loop computationally efficient, balancing accuracy requirements with energy consumption.
Solution Approach 2:
The outer loop allocation performs preliminary optimization calculations before commands are executed by the inner loop. By pre-calculating optimal control surface assignments based on current aircraft state and pilot commands, the system achieves high command execution accuracy while avoiding repeated computational optimization during actual execution, thereby reducing overall computational energy costs.
Data Source
AI summary
Aspects of the present disclosure generally relate to systems and methods for flight control of aircrafts driven by electric propulsion systems and in other types of vehicles. In some embodiments, a computer-implemented method for command prioritization in an aircraft is disclosed. The method comprises receiving a pilot command, analyzing the pilot command to determine characteristics associated with the pilot command, wherein the characteristics to airspeed and climb of an aircraft, assigning weights to characteristics associated with the pilot command based on constraint data, determining priority of execution between airspeed and climb based on the weights assigned to the characteristics associated with the pilot command, calculating a correction factor to be applied to the characteristics associated with the pilot command based on determined priority and generating at least one actuator command to control the aircraft based on determined priority of execution.