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Meeting	ACGS Committee Meeting 118 - Minneapolis, MN - October 2016
Agenda Location	7 SUBCOMMITTEE B – MISSILES AND SPACE 7.3 Fault-Tolerant Flight Control Using One Aerodynamic Control Surface
Title	Fault-Tolerant Flight Control Using One Aerodynamic Control Surface
Presenter	Raghu Venkataraman
Affiliation	University of Minnesota
Available Downloads*	presentation
	Downloads are available to members who are logged in and either Active* or attended this meeting.
Abstract	The flight control systems on manned commercial aircraft are certified to achieve very high levels of reliability, e.g. less than one catastrophic failure per billion flight hours. Governmental organizations are currently developing the related certification standards for civil unmanned aircraft vehicles/systems (UAV/S) to operate safely in the national airspace. Most current civil UAVs are significantly less reliable than their manned counterparts. This is mainly due to the presence of single points-of-failure and the use of low-reliability components. For example, many fixed-wing UAVs are equipped with only two aerodynamic control surfaces. In the absence of fault tolerance, each control surface is a single point-of-failure because a fault in either surface will lead to loss of aircraft. In this talk, a single aerodynamic control surface is shown to be sufficient to stabilize the aircraft and execute a set of maneuvers that lead to a controlled landing. Recent flight tests at the University of Minnesota have demonstrated this concept on two different UAVs: One of which was controlled by a human pilot and the other by a fault-tolerant autopilot. The control of other aerial bodies, including larger aircraft, using one aerodynamic control surface may be possible using similar methods as those described in this talk.