Adaptive Control for ESTOL Design Abstractions— Performance Analysis

Aviation operations in the United States are expected to increase multifold by 2025. The consequences of such an increase in air traffic could become overwhelming at major airports. Extreme Short Take Off and Landing (ESTOL) aircraft offer the ability to alleviate the foreseen congestion at major airports by utilizing small runways that are inaccessible to conventional airplanes. In this paper, we address the challenges associated with ESTOL flight in the midst of modeling uncertainties and flight dynamics variations. As a preliminary investigation, we implement and test a direct-adaptive flight control architecture previously developed at NASA Ames Research Center. The controller includes direct adaptation to compensate for large errors without identifying the source. This ability is particularly appropriate for controlling vehicles subject to a variety of damages, failures and other dynamic changes or uncertainties. Preliminary results show that the direct-adaptive flight controller is successful in accommodating various ESTOL design abstractions. Control performance as it adapts to the “unmodeled” dynamics is documented for various flight conditions.