ADVANCED TRACKING AND ADAPTIVE POINTING CONTROL MODULE

ADVANCED GUN POINTING AND STABILIZATION SYSTEMS FOR BOTH ROTORCRAFT AND FIGHTING VEHICLE BASED WEAPONS REQUIRE THE INTEGRATION OF COMPLEX TARGET LEAD PREDICTION ALGORITHMS, NONLINEAR ADAPTIVE STRATEGIES, AND FAULT-TOLERANT USE OF MULTI-SENSOR SUITES INCLUDING IMV'S, DISTRIBUTED ACCELEROMETERS, OPTICAL SENSORS, R TO D CONVERTERS, AND ETC. CURRENT CONTROL HARDWARE ARCHITECTURES DO NOT PROVIDE A SUFFICIENTLY FLEXIBLE DESIGN AND TEST ENVIRONMENT TO READILY EVALUATE THE BENEFITS OF SUCH ADVANCED CONTROL STRATEGIES. THE PROPOSED RESEARCH WILL DEVELOP AND TEST A RUGGEDIZED HARDWARE PROTOTYPE SUITABLE FOR FLIGHT/ GROUND VEHICLE TEST AND DEMONSTRATION. PHASE I WILL ADDRESS DETAILED ARCHITECTURE SPECIFICATIONS AGAINST ARMY COMPUTATIONAL REQUIREMENTS AND WILL GENERATE A DETAILED BROAD LEVEL HARDWARE SPECIFICATION FOR THE PROTOTYPE TO BE FULLY DEMONSTRATED IN PHASE II. SELECTED ELEMENTS OF THE ARCHITECTURE WILL BE DEMONSTRATED AT THE END OF PHASE I. AN OPEN, FLEXIBLE ARCHITECTURE IS PROPOSED WHICH WILL ALLOW RIDIG RECONFIGURATION AND UPGRADES TO THE STATE-OF-THE-ART HARDWARE INCLUDING ASIC'S FOR DEDICATED PRODUCTION WEAPONS SYSTEMS. PROCESSOR PROGRAMMING WILL BE ACCOMPLISHED VIA A BLOCK DIAGRAM DATA BASE AND AUTOMATED CODE GENERATION IN EITHER FORTRAN OR ADA DEPENDING ON USER REQUIREMENTS AND AVAILABLE PROCESSOR DEVELOPMENT TOOLS.