ADAPTIVE STABILIZATION OF WEAPON SYSTEMS USING SURFACE MOUNTED ADAPTIVE STRUCTURE TECHNOLOGY

RECENT RESEARCH IN CONTROL THEORY HAS LED TO NONLINEAR CONTROL LAWS CAPABLE OF COMPLETELY DECOUPLING ESSENTIAL COMPONENTS OF THE NONLINEAR DYNAMICS OF MULTIBODY SYSTEMS INCLUDING COMPLEX/HYBRID BODIES - E.G., WITH BOTH FLEXIBLE AND RIGID BODY MODES. THESE ALGORITHMS EXHIBIT OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE IN SIMULATIONS. THE NONLINEAR CONTROL LAWS HAVE BEEN TESTED IN FLIGHT CONTROL EXPERIMENTS AT NASA AMES, IN A LIMITED SET OF EXPERIMENTS IN ROBOTICS AND IN OUR OWN WORK ON THE SLEWING AND POINTING CONTROL OF ARTICULATED STRUCTURES. HOWEVER, WE ARE AWARE OF NO STUDIES OR EXPERIMENTS TESTING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THESE LAWS FOR CONTROL OF WEAPONS PLATFORMS. THE PRIMARY GOAL OF OUR RESEARCH EFFORT IS TO ASSESS THE PERFORMANCE OF THE NONLINEAR DECOUPLING CONTROL LAWS FOR WEAPONS SYSTEMS. THE STARTING POINT WILL BE OUR EXTENSIVE EXPERIENCE WITH THE NONLINEAR, ADAPTIVE CONTROL OF MULTI-FLEX-BODY SYSTEMS.