Evolution Assisted Flight Control System Design

Evolution, light sport aircraft, framework, time-domain, control, genetic algrithm.

An evolution driven controller design approach has been applied to a rigid body aircraft model of a light sport aircraft. The model comprises inertial, aerodynamic and flight dynamics related elements with the controller architecture based on Classical Control Theory. The evolution driven concept has played a significant role in the optimization of the proposed controller structure by providing tuned controller parameters, which meet the designed fitness function criteria imposed through the optimization problem formulation. The proposed fitness function combines significant controller stability evaluation conditions into a single abstraction. The use of a robust optimization framework based on the genetic algorithms has allowed the suggested form of multi-criteria optimization definition. The suitability of the evolutionary optimization has been successfully tested on a model with rigid body aircraft dynamics. Time-domain simulation results have shown the compliance of the tuned controller performance with its anticipated behavior.