Immunity-Based Accommodation of Aircraft Subsystem Failures

Purpose:

This paper aims to describe the design, development and flight-simulation testing of an artificial immune-system-based approach for accommodation of different aircraft sub-system failures/damages.

Design/methodology/approach:

The approach is based on building an artificial memory, which represents self- (nominal conditions) and non-self (abnormal conditions) within the artificial immune system paradigm. Self- and non-self are structured as a set of memory cells consisting of measurement strings, over pre-defined time windows. Each string is a set of features values at each sample time of the flight. The accommodation algorithm is based on the cell in the memory that is the most similar to the in-coming measurement. Once the best match is found, control commands corresponding to this match are extracted from the memory and used for control purposes.

Findings:

The results demonstrate the possibility of extracting pilot compensatory commands from the self/non-self structure and capability of the artificial-immune-system-based scheme to accommodate an actuator malfunction, maintain control and complete the task.

Research limitations/implications:

This paper concentrates on investigation of the possibility of extracting compensatory pilot commands. This is a preliminary step toward a more comprehensive solution to the aircraft abnormal condition accommodation problem.

Practical implications:

The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach using a motion-based flight simulator for actuator and sensor failures.

Originality/value:

This research effort is focused on investigating the use of the artificial immune system paradigm for control purposes based on a novel methodology.