Missile Control Research Articles

InfoCulture: The Smithsonian Book of Information Age Inventions by Steven Lubar

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 719 in the control and guidance of missiles and the Apollo space vehicles and the development of the PDP series of minicomputers and VAX superminicomputers systems by the Digital Equipment Corporation. In the following two chapters the development of the microprocessor and the subsequent widespread diffusion of electronic digital com­ puters is dealt with, via a description of the development of handheld calculators and an account of the growth of interest in, and develop­ ment of, personal computers. In the final chapter, a discussion of the implications of supercomputers, workstations, and computer net­ working brings this account of landmarks in digital computing up to the mid-1980s. This book is a well-written and authoritative introduction to the history of digital computing. However, one should keep in mind that it is not a general history of American and European computing devices, nor even of post-World War II digital computing in the United States. It is a “Smithsonian pictorial history” and thus struc­ tured by the immense but finite holdings within the collections of the Smithsonian Institution. I suspect that though historians of comput­ ing will find that this book offers a richly illustrated overview, its real value will be to other historians of technology and science who have an interest in the history of digital computing but require an intro­ ductory text and bibliography. James S. Small Dr. Small recently received his doctorate from the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine at the University of Manchester. He has published on com­ puter history and in particular in connection with the history of post-World War II electronic analog computing. InfoCulture: The Smithsonian Book ofInformation Age Inventions. By Ste­ ven Lubar. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993. Pp. vii + 408; illustra­ tions, notes, bibliography, index. $34.95. Information, communications, and entertainment machines have played an important part in defining our culture, “at least as much as ethnicity, race, or geography,” says author Steven Lubar in his introduction to this 400-page volume. In it he takes us on a whirlwind tour of the history of information technologies. Lubar is curator of engineering and industry at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. The book is divided into three parts: communication, entertain­ ment, and information. Technology, unlike the natural sciences, admits of no true taxonomy, and Lubar’s organization seems appro­ priate to his purposes. It permits him to emphasize various communi­ cations systems (end-user technology, he calls it) as opposed to the physics of the materials and devices that go to make up the systems. 720 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Nevertheless, where appropriate, he does cover fundamental inven­ tions like the vacuum triode and the transistor, if not in great detail. Part 1, on communications, opens with a treatment of “Words,” in which Lubar covers the development of high-speed printing of books, magazines, and newspapers, and then goes on to review the develop­ ment of the typewriter, copying machines, word processors, and desk­ top publishing. A chapter on “Pictures” begins with the first pictorial technology that was accepted as unequivocally objective, namely, pho­ tography, and continues with coverage of engineering drawings, wire photos, and computer graphics. These chapters are followed by oth­ ers on the telegraph, wireless telegraphy, the telephone, and a “Be­ yond Telephone” chapter covering fax machines, E-mail, cellular phones, and cyberspace. The second part of the book is devoted to entertainment, including recorded sound, moving pictures, radio, television, and a final chap­ ter, “Beyond Television,” treating video recording, video games, and high-definition television. Part 3, on information, is devoted com­ pletely to computers, with separate chapters on “Before Computers,” “Computers,” “Software,” and “Beyond Computers,” the last cov­ ering the computer’s role in automation, cybernetics, artificial intelli­ gence, and even science fiction. In his introductory overview, Lubar seems to suggest there is a certain inevitability about what will be invented to enhance human and machine communication and how such inventions will be ex­ ploited. The inventions and their applications together cut a wide swath through history, resulting in a cultural “trajectory,” which may inform us about the value, or hazards, of future information inven­ tions...

Self-scheduled H-infinity control of missile via linear matrix inequalities

Self-scheduled H-infinity control of missile via linear matrix inequalities

Architectonic Studies for Post-Fossil Fuels Culture(s)

century. This equals about half the generating capacity of the destroyed nuclear plant in Chernobyl. Ukraine's electronics industry is being converted in the same way. Factories that once built control and guidance systems for missiles and other weapons are now starting to manufacture silicon solar cells to generate electricity. In Nevada, the U.S. Department of Energy has commissioned studies aimed at turning an area just outside the nuclear weapon test range into a national solar resource. More than 30

Information Categorization for BMD Command and Control

Information requirements were investigated for operators in two BMD C2 (Ballistic Missile Defense Command and Control) Centers—command level and operations level. The objective was to elicit their underlying perceptions and cognitive structure of incoming data items, to address information display and decision support design requirements. Experts judged information items using an unconstrained sorting task, and data were analyzed using multivariate scaling methods. Findings revealed differences between the two groups in clustering of and associations between information items; e.g., more complex associations were found for the command level center. Also, the utility of the scaling algorithms for the large data sets used was assessed.

Time-optimal attitude control scheme for a spinning missile

The problem of minimum-time attitude control of a spinning missile is addressed. The missile is modeled as a rigid body that is symmetric about its spin axis. A single reaction jet provides the necessary transverse moments. The missile is assumed to have some arbitrary initial transverse angular velocity, and it is desired to take it to some final attitude in minimum time while reducing the transverse angular velocity to zero. A scheme to generate thruster firing times as functions of the initial and desired states of a spinning missile is described. This scheme involves transforming the state variables and integrating the transformed state and costate equations backward in time and generating the control history using the properties of the optimal control. The control history, given in terms of the thruster firing times, is stored as a function of the boundary conditions. A feedback control law based on function generation is then proposed that uses only the first thruster turn-on and turn-off times. This proposed control scheme can be implemented in real time with good accuracy.

特集 新しい飛行制御技術の展望 飛しょう体の新しい制御技術

特集 新しい飛行制御技術の展望 飛しょう体の新しい制御技術

Dynamic scheduling of modern-robust-control autopilot designs for missiles

The dynamic scheduling of multiple linear-time-invariant (LTI) controllers, designed using H/sub infinity // mu techniques, for systems with widely varying plant dynamics is examined. The observer/full-state feedback structure of the LTI H/sub infinity / controller is extended to accommodate the time-varying, nonlinear dynamics problem. A procedure for handling the variations that occur between fixed operating points, in the two-Riccati equation solutions, is proposed. An example missile control problem that contains realistic and necessary performance goals and robustness constraints is included to demonstrate the viability of the approach.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

Design of Autopilots for High Performance Missiles

A novel control algorithm involving a robust inverse dynamics estimation (RIDE) is presented. It is shown how the control algorithm can be used in conjunction with a new safe criterion to result in the optimal and safe control algorithm (OSCA). The OSCA control algorithm is applied to the control of a high performance missile, where it is shown to provide excellent performance in terms of tight non-interacting and safe control in the presence of actuator saturation.

Book Review: Automatic Control of AircrafC and Missiles - John H. Blakelock

Book Review: Automatic Control of AircrafC and Missiles - John H. Blakelock

Integrated aerofin/thrust vector control for tactical missiles

Because of increased enemy threat and reduced defense budget, the need exists for higher performance, multiple-mission tactical missile systems. Systems studies were performed that show pulse motors and integrated aerofin/thrust vector control enhance flexibility, performance, and enable reduced-span aerofins for higher armament loading on aircraft. Trade studies resulted in the selection of a movable nozzle with an elastomeric flexible bearing and electromechanical actuators. Actuator performance requirements were determined, and actuators were designed, built, and demonstrated on bench test hardware. The actuators incorporate low-inertia brushless dc motors and a unique drive train mechanism in a low-cost, lightweight, compact package. The demonstrated performance meets the requirements of 15-deg thrust vector angle, 400-deg/s slew rate, and 45-Hz bandwidth. Development of the four-axis fin control, thermal batteries, flightweight electronics, and flexible bearing is ongoing.

Linear-quadratic guidance law for dual control of homing missiles

= gain = measurement matrix = observability Gramian = performance index = navigation ratio = time, s = components of relative velocity, ft/s = control vector = positive-definite, diagonal weighting matrix (constant) = constant weight in dual-control guidance law, s~ = positive-definite, diagonal weighting matrix (time varying) = components of relative position, ft = state vector = matrix in gain vector

Missile technology control regime

Missile technology control regime

Expert System on a Chip: An Engine for Real-Time Approximate Reasoning

The role of inferencing with uncertainty is becoming more important in rule-based expert systems (ES), since knowledge given by a human expert is often uncertain or imprecise. We have succeeded in designing a VLSI chip which can perform an entire inference process based on fuzzy logic. The design of the VLSI fuzzy inference engine emphasizes simplicity, extensibility, and efficiency (operational speed and layout area). It is fabricated in 2.5 mm CMOS technology. The inference engine consists of three major components; a rule set memory, an inference processor, and a controller. In this implementation, a rule set memory is realized by a read only memory (ROM). The controller consists of two counters. In the inference processor, one data path is laid out for each rule. The number of the inference rule can be increased adding more data paths to the inference processor. All rules are executed in parallel, but each rule is processed serially. The logical structure of fuzzy inference proposed in the current paper maps nicely onto the VLSI structure.A two-phase nonoverlapping clocking scheme is used. Timing tests indicate that the inference engine can operate at approximately 20.8 MHz. This translates to an execution speed of approximately 80,000 Fuzzy Logical Inferences Per Second (FLIPS), and indicates that the inference engine is suitable for a demanding real-time application. The potential applications include decision-making in the area of command and control for intelligent robot systems, process control, missile and aircraft guidance, and other high performance machines.

The Air-Launched Cruise Missile and Canadian Arms Control Policy

The Air-Launched Cruise Missile and Canadian Arms Control Policy

Status and concerns for bank-to-turn control of tactical missiles

Status and concerns for bank-to-turn control of tactical missiles

Guidance and Control of Tactical Missiles

Guidance and Control of Tactical Missiles

Optical Kalman filtering for missile guidance

Optical systolic array processors constitute a powerful and general-purpose set of optical architectures with high computational rates. In this paper, Kalman filtering, a novel application for these architectures, is investigated. All required operations are detailed; their realization by optical and special-purpose analog electronics are specified; and the processing time of the system is quantified. The specific Kalman filter application chosen is for an air-to-air missile guidance controller. The architecture realized in this paper meets the design goal of a fully adaptive Kalman filter which processes a measurement every 1 msec. The vital issue of flow and pipelining of data and operations in a systolic array processor is addressed. The approach is sufficiently general and can be realized on an optical or digital systolic array processor.

A computer simulation of launch procedures for a squadron of minuteman II ICBMs

A computer model simulates the performance of the command and control system of a Minuteman II ICBM squadron. Instead of predicting hardware and weapons performance, it focuses upon how the squadron's launch rules and procedures affect the launch process when there is physical damage. Each of five modeled Launch Control Centers (LCCs) has nominal responsibility for one flight of 10 single-warhead missiles. This model simulates two types of command centers. Its Airborne Launch Control Center (ALCC) assumes control of missiles disconnected from the LCCs because of damage. Although this model currently runs by itself, it is designed to fit into an elaborated model containing levels of higher command authori ty, a coordinated bomber force, and a submarine-launched ballistic missile force. Results of a simple run are explained. Defense policy analysts in the Brookings Foreign Policy Studies Program will use this model and others like it as research tools.

Further Notes and Anecdotes on Spread-Spectrum Origins

This sequel to R. A. Scholtz's monograph of May 1982, in this TRANSACTIONS, adds to the early history of spread-spectrum communications from circa 1900 until about 15 years ago. Relevant to the origins of this field of radio signaling, the following are included in a number of items of quite recent appreciation: the 1930 invention of secret communications featuring spectrum despreading via a locally generated reference at the receiver; a stratagem of electronic warfare during the Battle of the Bulge, in World War II, that cleverly made use of Armstrong's frequency modulation; and the role of a star actress from the motion picture field, in origination of frequency hopping for antijamming radio control of missiles. Some further, and first-hand, reminiscences are given of germinal M.I.T. spread-spectrum contributions, and of similar noise-correlation radar art. Extensive footnotes cast sidelights on the beginnings of information theory, and also, among other things, on the keeping of military high-technology secrets over decades, even between securitycleared family members. A variety of references is appended.

Comparison of Analytical and Experimental Supersonic Aerodynamic Characteristics of a Forward Control Missile

Techniques to predict the aerodynamic characteristics of slender cruciform missiles have been developed and are constantly being updated and improved. This paper presents comparisons between analytical and experimental supersonic aerodynamic data for a class of canard-controlled missile configurations similar to the sidewinder missile. Three aerodynamic prediction computer codes, including program MISSILE2, a recently improved version of program MISSILE, are evaluated by comparison with the test data to assess their accuracy. The major emphasis is placed on the roll control characteristics. In addition, tail span optimization, longitudinal and lateral control, induced roll, and missile roll orientation effects are addressed.