The human operator is planning trajectories for accomplishing a desired transition while meeting energy, structural, and obstacle constraints, replanning trajectories, reconfiguring how the weapon platform is controlled, when needed, and modifying goals in real-time. The objective of this project is to develop control software design procedures that enable control systems to automate those functions now setting the tempo of operator interactions and thus to enable a higher degree of system autonomy. The on-board optimization provides the mathematical framework for allowing control logic to be designed at a higher level of abstraction. The control software designer will now focus on quantified statement of the goals, system behavior, and the constraints, rather than on signal paths, gains, and ad hoc exception handling logic. In current control software design methods, each possibility of meeting a constraint and each component failure requires another control mode.
Additional logic is necessary to manage the selection and transition between modes.
The design of this logic consists of determining a large number of IF-THEN rules one at time. Future control systems will be able to remember and execute a large number of conditional rules. However, their design is not feasible with current methods because control software development time and cost would be prohibitive. Basing the control software upon on-board optimization enables the design of sophisticated control systems by shifting the design to a higher level of abstraction. The adaptive on-board models increase the adaptability of the controlled system.