Evaluating Aircraft Abnormal Conditions Using an Artificial Dendritic Cell Mechanism

Aircraft abnormal conditions evaluation is a vital prerequisite to a successful post-failure accommodation. Moreover, correct flight envelope estimation and protection requires correct evaluation of both the type and severity of the abnormal condition once the failed subsystem is correctly identified. In a previous study, a biologically-inspired dendritic cell mechanism for aircraft sub-system failure detection and identification was proposed and tested with high performance rates. The mechanism uses a set of artificial dendritic cells to process the multiple outcomes of a hierarchical multi-self detection strategy and produces a single detection outcome. Mature biological dendritic cells that migrate from the tissue to the lymph node carry patterns that are specific to the antigen. Similarly, computational units structured as artificial dendritic cells were used to identify the aircraft failed sub-system.