An Overview of Flight Test Results for a Formation Flight Autopilot

Download or read book An Overview of Flight Test Results for a Formation Flight Autopilot written by and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 22 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first flight test phase of the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center Autonomous Formation Flight project has successfully demonstrated precision autonomous station-keeping of an F/A-18 research airplane with a second F/A-18 airplane. Blended inertial navigation system (INS) and global positioning system (GPS) measurements have been communicated across an air-to-air telemetry link and used to compute relative-position estimates. A precision research formation autopilot onboard the trailing airplane controls lateral and vertical spacing while the leading airplane operates under production autopilot control. Four research autopilot gain sets have been designed and flight-tested, and each exceeds the project design requirement of steady-state tracking accuracy within 1 standard deviation of 10 ft.