Pilot-Directed Computer-Assisted Helicopter Formation Flying

Scientific Systems Company Inc. (SSCI) and University of California, Berkeley (UCB) jointly propose to develop and implement computer-aided Autonomous Formation Flying Control Technology (AFF-CT) for heterogeneous formations of manned helicopters. One of the objectives of the project is to design a control architecture and corresponding control algorithms that are robust to uncertainties and disturbances even while utilizing minimum inter-vehicle communications. Another objective is to design a formation manager to assure smooth transitioning between different modes of operation including take-off, landing, formation initialization, formation termination, adding vehicles to or removing them from the formation, pop-up threat avoidance, and emergency procedures. In order to achieve these objectives, we plan to carry out the following tasks: (i) Problem formulation for autonomous formation flying for heterogeneous manned helicopters; (ii) Development of decentralized Model Predictive Control (MPC) based formation control algorithms; (iii) Development of a Formation Manager using a Finite State Machine (FSM) approach; and (iv) Implementation and testing of the AFF-CT algorithms on simulations of small-scale and large helicopters. Upon successful demonstration of the feasibility of the AFF-CT system, in Phase II we plan to work with United Technologies Research Center (UTRC) and Sikorsky in Phases II and III on transitioning the technology to their helicopters.