Nonlinear adaptive flight path and speed control using energy principles

To make personal air transportation accessible to a broad audience, the Total Energy Control System strategy is proposed for direct control of airspeed and flight path. To increase its reliability, the control strategy is combined with recent successes in military advanced flight control. Although digital fly by wire technology is assumed as the enabling technology, this assumption may be limited to the proposed outerloop laws, allowing conventional innerloop pitch control systems. This article investigates the hypothesis that Nonlinear Adaptive Control combined with the Total Energy Control System provides the benefits of both strategies; intuitive flight control, failure tolerant performance, and mathematical analysis pertinent to airworthiness certification. A disadvantage is the increased complexity over conventional control law design, and the implications for airworthiness certification of integrated adapting systems. The design is demonstrated in nonlinear simulation. The presented work consists of tutorial examples which are used for algorithmic aspects of airworthiness certification. The effects of time-delays, lost or damaged data transmission, and the use of stochastic adaptive analysis remain to be investigated.