N. Coleman

Architecture based approach to the control software design

In this paper, we introduce an architecture based approach for the development of large scale embedded software systems. Three essential components which fundamentally describe this architecture based approach are: (1) the structure of the software system, (2) the definition of the architectural components, and (3) the connections between the components. A well designed structure features software reusability, facilitates rapid prototyping, and enhances the software systems life cycle. The architecture based design approach is suitable and applicable to structure software system development criteria such as portability (unified approach), interconnectivity, and/or flexibility (modularly-designed environment).

Real-time, high-performance, adaptive, robust control system design

To control complex plants requires advanced computer control system and control methods. A powerful control system integrating the state of the art in computer hardware and software is developed in this paper. The hardware configuration, specification and interface as well as the software environment are described in detail. This control system has been connected to a complex nonlinear controlled plant: the gun turret testbed located at the US Army ARDEC. The implementation procedure of the advanced control algorithms is presented to execute the real-time control of the gun turret testbed; and the experimental results are also presented and analysed.

High precision weapon control system design

Several control design methodologies are applied to a weapon testbed to assess their applicability and to characterize the achievable performance of the gun-turret system in precision control. Applications of robust control design methods to the gun-turret system lead to a characterization of the achievable performance. Nonlinear feedforward servomechanism theory is adapted to account for hard nonlinearities and backlash. A preload scheme is devised, using this theory to increase the allowable level of backlash. A fuzzy logic controller improves the transient response and steady-state error of the gun-turret control system. This integration of robust, nonlinear, and adaptive controls is highly promising. An integrated fuzzy-robust controller is developed to achieve a rapid transient response (due to the correction from the fuzzy controller) and robustness (inherent in the robust design).<<ETX>>

Fire control architecture modeling and animation

A reference architecture model of a typical weapon fire control system has been established with the real-time object-oriented modeling (ROOM) environment, ObjecTime. A GUI communicates with the reference architecture to test a specific design based on the architecture implementation. The GUI also communicates with an independent ballistics calculation program to send the target parameters and receive the ballistics calculation results.

Integrated approach to the control of nonlinear flexible pointing systems

The architecture based control design approach is employed to integrate several different control methodologies including modeling, controller design, simulation and implementation to design a high precision weapon control system. This integrated approach leads to an effective means to address the complexity, uncertainty, and nonlinearity which inherently exist in nonlinear flexible pointing systems.

Wind profile extraction and impact point prediction from projectile trajectory measurements

In this paper, the problem of wind profile extraction and impact point prediction from projectile trajectory measurements is formulated within the extended Kalman filtering framework. Factorized implementations of extended Kalman filtering, smoothing, and prediction algorithms are developed. Different wind models are discussed. The algorithms are demonstrated through simulation.