IMPLEMENTATION OF A TRANSPUTER-BASED FLIGHT CONTROLLER

Increasingly, as flight-control laws become more complex and sample times shorten, implementation requirements are outstripping the capacity of general-purpose single-processor systems. This has prompted this investigation of the feasibility of using a parallel-processing transputer-based network, programming in occam, for the implementation of an aircraft-flight-control algorithm. Although the problems of flight-control implementation motivated the study, the research findings have wider applicability. Three techniques to generate the concurrent realisation of a typical flight-control law are described and illustrated together with some indications of their strengths and weaknesses. On the basis of this preliminary study, one of these approaches is suggested as a practical way to tackle the problem. Software tools have been used and developed to automate the mapping of control laws onto transputerbased systems. These have proved to be effective and convenient aids, supporting real-time simulation and implementation.