Innovative Piloting Technique for a Semi-Autonomous UAV Lighter-Than-Air Platform Simulator

UAS design has in these years reached a point in which trends and objectives are well beyond the actual test capabilities. The tendency of the past to build and test has clearly been overridden by new design concepts for many reasons, one of these being the scarce or null possibility of testing safety-critical systems such as UAV systems. This is the context in which the Elettra-Twin-Flyer (ETF) Simulator is constantly upgraded and rearranged to incorporate new features and more advanced capabilities. In this paper it is shown how the piloting modes have been differentiated, to improve the airship autonomy and allow path following operations. Innovative piloting tools have been introduced and a new Human-Machine-Interface has been proposed along

Aerospace medicine and biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes (supplement 324)

This bibliography lists 200 reports, articles and other documents introduced into the NASA Scientific and Technical Information System during May, 1989. Subject coverage includes: aerospace medicine and psychology, life support systems and controlled environments, safety equipment, exobiology and extraterrestrial life, and flight crew behavior and performance

Aeronautical Engineering: A special bibliography with indexes, supplement 64, December 1975

This bibliography lists 288 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in November 1975

US and USSR Military Aircraft and Missile Aerodynamics 1970-1980. A selected, annotated bibliography, volume 1

The purpose of this selected bibliography (281 citations) is to list available, unclassified, unlimited publications which provide aerodynamic data on major aircraft and missiles currently used by the military forces of the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Technical disciplines surveyed include aerodynamic performance, static and dynamic stability, stall-spin, flutter, buffet, inlets nozzles, flap performance, and flying qualities. Concentration is on specific aircraft including fighters, bombers, helicopters, missiles, and some work on transports, which are or could be used for military purposes. The bibliography is limited to material published from 1970 to 1980. The publications herein illustrate many of the types of aerodynamic data obtained in the course of aircraft development programs and may therefore provide some guidance in identifying problems to be expected in the conduct of such work. As such, this information may be useful in planning future research programs

Aeronautical Engineering: A special bibliography with indexes, supplement 67, February 1976

This bibliography lists 341 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in January 1976

Adaptive computer‐generated forces for simulator‐based training, Expert Systems with Applications

Simulator-based training is in constant pursuit of increasing level of realism. The transition from doctrine-driven computer-generated forces (CGF) to adaptive CGF represents one such effort. The use of doctrine-driven CGF is fraught with challenges such as modeling of complex expert knowledge and adapting to the trainees’ progress in real time. Therefore, this paper reports on how the use of adaptive CGF can overcome these challenges. Using a self-organizing neural network to implement the adaptive CGF, air combat maneuvering strategies are learned incrementally and generalized in real time. The state space and action space are extracted from the same hierarchical doctrine used by the rule-based CGF. In addition, this hierarchical doctrine is used to bootstrap the self-organizing neural network to improve learning efficiency and reduce model complexity. Two case studies are conducted. The first case study shows how adaptive CGF can converge to the effective air combat maneuvers against rule-based CGF. The subsequent case study replaces the rule-based CGF with human pilots as the opponent to the adaptive CGF. The results from these two case studies show how positive outcome from learning against rule-based CGF can differ markedly from learning against human subjects for the same tasks. With a better understanding of the existing constraints, an adaptive CGF that performs well against rule-based CGF and human subjects can be designed

Autonomous Operations Planner: A Flexible Platform for Research in Flight-Deck Support for Airborne Self-Separation

The Autonomous Operations Planner (AOP), developed by NASA, is a flexible and powerful prototype of a flight-deck automation system to support self-separation of aircraft. The AOP incorporates a variety of algorithms to detect and resolve conflicts between the trajectories of its own aircraft and traffic aircraft while meeting route constraints such as required times of arrival and avoiding airspace hazards such as convective weather and restricted airspace. This integrated suite of algorithms provides flight crew support for strategic and tactical conflict resolutions and conflict-free trajectory planning while en route. The AOP has supported an extensive set of experiments covering various conditions and variations on the self-separation concept, yielding insight into the system s design and resolving various challenges encountered in the exploration of the concept. The design of the AOP will enable it to continue to evolve and support experimentation as the self-separation concept is refined

Aeronautical Engineering: A continuing bibliography, supplement 116

This bibliography lists 550 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in November 1979