Flex Weapon Adaptive Flight Software in Plug and Play Environment

ABSTRACT: Cummings Aerospace proposes to define a plug-n-play and adaptive flight software for use on modular weapons systems. Modular weapons systems pose unique challenges to the plug-n-play environment including high reliability, high coupled hardware and software, and non-standard component elements. These factors all influence the flight software, which must be general enough to support multiple configurations or else be developed, tested, and integrated into each feasible weapon system configuration. Adaptable flight software would be able to utilize the hardware performance data provided during plug-n-play discovery and tune itself to meet the specifications of the hardware configuration. Existing plug-n-play specifications will be examined for modification particularly in the approaches to discovery and metadata necessary to support adaptive flight software. Further, the weapons system will be decomposed to determine component classes, component class interfaces, and component class data and metadata to support the modular weapon system integration and plug-n-play. Adaptable flight software architecture will be proposed and in particular adaptive navigation algorithms will be explored. The plug-n-play architecture will be modeled and the prototype navigation algorithms will be implemented to determine feasibility. Planning will occur on Phase II benchtop testing using relevant hardware. BENEFIT: Multiple DoD agencies are exploring the use of modular systems in order to increase the vendor base, decrease logistics, and increase technology transfer into the theater. In each case, the ability to both discover connected components and change performance and mission profiles without human user interaction will increase the usability, reliability, and flexibility of the modular systems. The use of both plug-n-play architectures and adaptable flight or embedded software will have relevance across all of these efforts and can be modified to support modular development in kinetic energy interceptors, weapons systems programs, and unmanned airborne and ground vehicle systems as well as other applications.