Tactical Immunized Maneuvering System for Exploration Air Vehicles [invited]
John Kaneshige, Kalmanje S. Krishnakumar · Infotech@Aerospace · 2005
Traditional flight management systems are designed to perform the necessary flight planning, navigation and guidance functions for flying from an origin to a destination. Special pre-constructed procedures and guidance modes are used for departing and arriving at airports, and performing special maneuvers such as holding patterns. However during an exploration mission, an aircraft must be capable of responding to feedback from the environment. As a result, it may be necessary to construct special procedures “on the fly”, which take into account the dynamics and performance limitations of the aircraft. This paper describes a tactical maneuvering system that uses an artificial immune system based approach for constructing maneuver sequences. This approach incorporates the problem solving abilities and memory retention characteristics of an immune system. The resulting system is capable of making time-critical decisions in complex situations to accomplish nearterm objectives within a dynamic environment. Simulation results demonstrate the potential of using immunized sequence selection in support of exploration missions using aerial vehicles.