Optimal Recovery Trajectories for Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance Systems (Auto GCAS)
Abstract
The USAF's F-16 Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance System (Auto GCAS) uses a single pre-planned roll to wings- level and 5-g pull-up to meet the operational requirements of being both aggressive and timely, meaning that extremely agile avoidance maneuvers will be executed at the last second to avoid the ground. There currently exists no similar Auto GCAS for manned military `heavy' aircraft with lower climb performance such as transport, tanker, or bomber aircraft. This research proposes a new optimal control approach to the ground collision avoidance problem for heavy aircraft by mapping the aggressive and timely requirements of the automatic recovery to an optimal control formulation which includes lateral maneuvers around terrain. Results are presented for representative heavy aircraft scenarios against 3-D digital terrain, which are then compared to a Multi-Trajectory Auto GCAS with ve pre-planned maneuvers. Metrics were developed to quantify the improvement from using an optimal approach versus the pre-planned maneuvers. The research results provide a basis to evaluate the expected performance of any future Auto GCAS for all aircraft.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 01, 2015
- Accession Number
- ADA618503
Entities
People
- Angela W. Suplisson
Organizations
- Air Force Institute of Technology