Minimum complexity uninhabited air vehicle guidance and flight control system

Abstract

The availability of commercial single antenna GPS units at low cost and discontinuation of selective availability of the system has caused increased interest in flying a stable fixed-wing aircraft using GPS alone. Utilizing such an inexpensive sensor, along with a relatively simple processor, a flight control and guidance system could be developed that would be so inexpensive as to be practically disposable even for some commercial applications. A flight control and guidance system that can operate on single antenna GPS measurements is also a candidate as an ultimate backup mode for any uninhabited air vehicle or piloted airplane given failure of sensors. In this paper, necessary hardware and software developments are described, as well as particular solutions explored in a flight test program.