Implementation of a transputer-based flight controller

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Implementation of a transputer-based flight controller

Fleming, P.J. / Garcia Nocetti, D.F. / Thompson, H.A.

Complex digital controllers, such as those required for aircraft, demand a powerful computing capability to achieve the required performance. Parallel processing provides this facility. The paper describes software and hardware aspects of a pilot study, undertaken in collaboration with the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Bedford, to map an existing aircraft flight control law for the Versatile Auto-Pilot (VAP), onto a parallel processing system, investigating the potential of the INMOS transputer and Occam, for the implementation of this control law. The VAP control law was chosen because it is representative of a class of flight control laws. However, it is not particularly demanding for implementation on a fast transputer array; it is used simply for demonstration. The VAP control law operates three different modes: height hold, glidepath hold and flare, depending on flight conditions. This project describes methods used to generate the concurrent realization for the height hold mode, comparing two alternative approaches: parallel branches and heuristic.