Methods, apparatus, and articles of manufacture to perform observer based control of a vehicle are disclosed. An example apparatus includes an error module to calculate a difference between a first state of a vehicle and a second state of the vehicle, the second state based on a measurement from a sensor, an observer module todetermine a third state of the vehicle based on the difference, a baseline control module to generate a first command based on the third state, and a vehicle module to execute the first command to control the vehicle.

A method and device for assisting initiation of a flare maneuver of an aircraft during a landing. The device includes an acquisition unit for acquiring current values of flight parameters of the aircraft, including the current height of the aircraft with respect to the ground, a computation unit for computing a first reference height and a second reference height, corresponding to a height starting from which the aircraft attains a current start of flare height while maintaining its current descent conditions over a predetermined first duration and over a predetermined second duration respectively, and an acoustic emission unit for emitting at least two sound signals in the cockpit of the aircraft, namely a first sound signal when the current height of the aircraft attains the first reference height during the descent and a second sound signal when the current height of the aircraft attains the second reference height during descent.

According to an embodiment, there is provided an onboard integrated computational system for an unmanned aircraft system (Stabilis autopilot). This is an integrated suite of hardware, software, and data-to-decisions services that are designed to meet the needs of business and research developers of UAS. Stabilis is designed to accelerate the development of any UAS platform and avionics system; it does so with hardware modularity and software adaptation. The Stabilis offers multiple technological advantages technological advantages including: Plug-and-adapt functionality; Data-to-decisions capability; and, On board parallelization capability.

The systems and methods described herein include attitude determination and control system (ADCS) and associated methods. Systems for determining attitude may be used by various vehicle types, such as to determine the vehicle's attitude relative to an external point of reference. The ADCS may be used for passive or active stabilization of spin on multiple axes. The ADCS uses an incorporated autonomous control algorithm to characterize the effects of actuation of the system components and simultaneously trains its response to attitude actuators. This characterization generates and updates a movement model, where the movement model is used to indicate or predict the effect of one or more attitude actuators given vehicle state information.

Systems and vehicle are provided. A vehicle system for a vehicle includes: a trajectory selection module configured to select a potential vehicle path relative to a current vehicle movement condition; a trajectory movement condition module configured to estimate a modeled movement condition of the vehicle along the potential vehicle path; a limit comparison module configured to determine whether the modeled movement condition violates vehicle limits; and a violation indicator module configured to generate an indication of impending violation.

A device for estimating an aircraft's speed relative to the ground and heading, while making no use of the rotation of the Earth or of the Earth's magnetic field. The device comprises in particular a first linear estimator that hybridizes a measurement of the speed of the aircraft relative to the ground as provided by a GNSS receiver with measurements of the acceleration and the attitudes of the aircraft coming from an AHRS device without a gyrocompass and without a magnetometer. The first estimator is made linear by replacing the single heading error estimate state of prior art embodiments with two states, namely estimates of the sine and of the cosine of the heading error.

A system including a set of computation modules configured to be utilized for computation of gains of at least one piloting law relative to at least one piloting axis of the aircraft and a data capture unit for capturing in at least one computation unit associated with a given piloting axis of the aircraft first values illustrating aerodynamic coefficients of the aircraft and second values defining delay and filter characteristics of the control chain relative to the given piloting axis, the computation unit being configured to compute the gains of the piloting law utilizing at least a part of the set of computation modules and the computation unit computing inputs intended for at least one actuator of a control surface adapted to control the aircraft relative to the given piloting axis in accordance with a corresponding current control value.

A process and a machine for improving a performance of a particular model of an aircraft, via reducing a size of a horizontal stabilizer for the particular model of the aircraft, the process comprising augmenting a nose-down moment, for the particular aircraft model, provided by a reduced horizontal stabilizer for the particular aircraft model, via addition of an ailevatoron mixer.

A method and apparatus for processing aerodynamic angles for an aircraft. A first rate of change in an inertial aerodynamic angle is calculated using data received from an inertial measurement system for the aircraft. Further, a second rate of change in an externally measured aerodynamic angle is calculated. Yet further, a filtered aerodynamic angle is generated during a flight of the aircraft using the first rate of change in the inertial aerodynamic angle and the second rate of change in the externally measured aerodynamic angle. Still further, a contribution of the first rate of change in the inertial aerodynamic angle used in generated the filtered aerodynamic angle is changed based on a difference between the first rate of change in the inertial aerodynamic angle and the second rate of change in the externally measured aerodynamic angle, enabling controlling the flight of the aircraft using the filtered aerodynamic angle.

Systems and methods are provided for generating a maneuver on a propagated route for an unmanned vehicle from a series of waypoints. A planner interface is configured to receive the waypoints and at least one parameter representing constraints on the propagated route of the unmanned vehicle. A curve generation component is configured to determine respective positions for each of a set of N+1 control points for a rational Bezier curve of N.sup.th order from the series of waypoints and the parameter. N is an integer greater than three. A weight generation component is configured to determine scalar weights for the set of N+1 control points from the parameter. A navigation interface is configured to provide the maneuver, generated from the positions for the set of control points and the scalar weights, to a control system of the unmanned vehicle, configured to execute the provided maneuver at the unmanned vehicle.