The overall aim is to provide technologies that will support high levels of autonomy, increasingly complex systems made up of many cheap components, the ability to reconfigure to react to a changing environment and the integration into a distributed control network.
Novel flow control mechanisms naturally require new control laws, but in addition further advances are being sought in this area covering:
- Coordinated control, integrated control (multi-platforms) and condition monitoring
- Non-linear and adaptive control
- Distributed aerodynamic control
Leicester are focusing on coordinated, integrated and distributed control. In particular coordinated dynamic programming methods for multiple UAVs and condition monitoring based on engine data will be studied.
Non-linear modelling of dynamic response to improve on linear models and allow some modelling of component ageing will also be researched. The practicality of utilising large arrays of micro-sensors and micro-actuators (as envisaged with sets of synthetic jets for example) requires the development of appropriate coordination approaches that will open up the possibilities of radically new control methods. Imperial College and Leicester will investigate methods to compose such arrays into robust and dynamically configurable virtual entities. The intention is to design systems where the control can take advantage of the nonlinearities thus reducing the need for conservative design.
Imperial College are studying adaptive and non-linear control strategies for aerospace systems. This will be focused on devising new generic adaptive and non-linear control algorithms suited to aerospace applications and the provision of robust but non-conservative implementations of these algorithms. The end goal is improved performance and reliability for the control software.
