Innovative Rotorcraft Flight Control Systems Options to Enhance Shipboard Operations

The primary objective of this SBIR Phase I effort is two fold: (1) offering a reliable and robust control law to further enhance the V-22 Flight Control Systems (FCS) beyond its current performance level via an augmented adaptive control scheme and (2) extending the restricted operational envelope (i.e., ship motion, ship airwake, wind-over-the-deck conditions, confined landing areas) of rotorcraft operating in the vicinity of ships. These two objectives are achieved through development of the advocated adaptive high performance robust FCS using two proven adaptive control schemes, namely è-D and Simple Adaptive Control (SAC) architectures. These two design techniques are well recognized by the control community for their robust performance under parametric and functional uncertainties in the system dynamics. In addition, the proposed è-D/SAC design concept also offers several important and attractive design features that are not offered by other modern design techniques. These features include: (1) ease of implementation without demanding high processing power, (2) easily implementable to work in concert with the existing V-22 Flight Software, (3) reliable adaptive performance capability through a direct adaptive control design paradigm without requiring an onboard aircraft parameter estimator.