APPLICATIONS OF TRANSPUTERS IN AIRCRAFT FLIGHT RESEARCH

THE INNOVATIVE CONCEPT PROPOSED HEREIN INVOLVES APPLYING TECHNOLOGY TO DESIGN, BUILD AND DEMONSTRATE A LOW COST, HIGHPERFORMANCE, EXPANDABLE, HIGH RELIABLE AIRBORNE AUXILIARY DIGITAL COMPUTER FOR USE IN CONDUCTING FLIGHT RESEARCH IN HIGH PERFORMANCE AIRCRAFT. THE COMPUTER (HEREAFTER REFERREDTO AS THE FLIGHT RESEARCH COMPUTER) WOULD BE FITTED TO A FLIGHT RESEARCH AIRCRAFT TO PERFORM ONBOARD COMPUTATIONS ASSOCIATED WITH THE FLIGHT RESEARCH SUCH AS BUT NOT LIMITED TO DISPLAY GENERATION ALGORITHMS, ONBOARD TRAJECTORY GENERATION, TRAJECTORY OPTIMIZATION, PARAMETER IDENTIFICATION AND ADVANCED CONTROL ALGORITHMS. THUS, WE ARE PROPOSING THE DESIGN OF A STANDARD, GENERAL PURPOSE, AIRBORNE, FLIGHT RESEARCH COMPUTER BASED ON TRANSPUTER TECHNOLOGY WHICH IS CONFIGURABLE AND ADAPTABLE IN SIZE, SHAPE, WEIGHT, PERFORMANCE (COMPUTER THROUGHPUT), AND TASK (APPLICATIONS SOFTWARE) TO ACCOMMODATE A WIDE RANGE OF FLIGHT RESEARCH APPLICATIONS ON A WIDE VARIETY OF ADVANCED FLIGHT RESEARCH AIRCRAFT. THIS INNOVATION PARALLELS A TRANSPUTER BASED AIRBORNE COMPUTER APPLICATION TO INSTRUMENTATION SYSTEMS BEING DEVELOPED IN-HOUSE AT NASA AMES-DRYDEN. THE INSTRUMENTATIONCOMPUTER IS MEANT TO EXECUTE ALGORITHMS INVOLVING DATA ACQUISITION, PRE-PROCESSING AND FILTERING; AND TELEMETRY DATA FORMULATION AND COMPRESSION. THE FLIGHT RESEARCH COMPUTER PROPOSED HEREIN ADDRESSES ONBOARD DIGITAL COMPUTATION REQUIREMENTS DIRECTLY RELATED TO FLIGHT RESEARCH. THE FLIGHT RESEARCH COMPUTER MUST INTERFACE WITH A VARIETY OF DATA SOURCES PROBABLY MORE ENCOMPASSING THAN THE INSTRUMENTATION COMPUTER. IN ADDITION, THE ALGORITHMS TO BE EXECUTED WILL BE RESEARCH PROGRAMS WRITTEN IN "C", ADA, AND/OR FORTRAN.