Mathematical treatment of aircraft maneuvers

This work addresses the problem faced by an aircraft that is off its nominal flight path. The goal is to find the optimal trajectory to safely and efficiently return the aircraft to its proper path in rugged terrain. The authors approach to this problem is to consider the space of possible trajectories as a series of linked maneuvers, so that a particular trajectory can be described by the ordered list of parameters specifying the maneuvers. A penalty function is minimized with respect to variations of the maneuver parameter list. The work considered trajectories of up to three straight flight segments linked by turns. The penalty function includes terms penalizing elapsed time for the measure, distance climbed, and closest approach to the ground as well as distance from the nominal flight path at the end of the maneuver. Minimization is performed by means of an adaptive fuzzy-logic-enhanced genetic algorithm.© (2000) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.