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Results for “STABILIZATION, AUTOMATIC”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 37 records · Page 2
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1967

Design concepts using ring lasers for frequency stabilization

Laser frequency stabilization methods are based on a frequency discriminant which generates an unambiguous deviation signal used for automatic stabilization. Closed-loop control stabilizes cavity length at a null point. Some systems have a stabilized ring laser using a piezoelectric dither and others use a Doppler gain tube.

Mocker, H.↗
NASA NTRS1958

Hovering and Transition Flight Tests of a 1/5-Scale Model of a Jet-Powered Vertical-Attitude VTOL Research Airplane

An experimental investigation has been made to determine the dynamic stability and control characteristics of a 1/5-scale flying model of a jet-powered vertical-attitude VTOL research airplane in hovering and transition flight. The model was powered with either a hydrogen peroxide rocket motor or a compressed-air jet exhausting through an ejector tube to simulate the turbojet engine of the airplane. The gyroscopic effects of the engine were simulated by a flywheel driven by compressed-air jets. In hovering flight the model was controlled by jet-reaction controls which consisted of a swiveling nozzle on the main jet and a movable nozzle on each wing tip; and in forward flight the model was controlled by elevons and a rudder. If the gyroscopic effects of the jet engine were not represented, the model could be flown satisfactorily in hovering flight without any automatic stabilization devices. When the gyroscopic effects of the jet engine were represented, however, the model could not be controlled without the aid of artificial stabilizing devices because of the gyroscopic coupling of the yawing and pitching motions. The use of pitch and yaw dampers made these motions completely stable and the model could then be controlled very easily. In the transition flight tests, which were performed only with the automatic pitch and yaw dampers operating, it was found that the transition was very easy to perform either with or without the engine gyroscopic effects simulated, although the model had a tendency to fly in a rolled and sideslipped attitude at angles of attack between approximately 25 and 45 deg because of static directional instability in this range.

Smith, Charles C., Jr.↗
NASA NTRS1961

Hovering and Transition Flight Tests of a 1/5-Scale Model of a Jet-Powered Vertical-Attitude VTOL Research Airplane

An experimental investigation has been made to determine the dynamic stability and control characteristics of a 1/5-scale flying model of a jet-powered vertical-attitude VTOL research airplane in hovering and transition flight. The model was powered with either a hydrogen peroxide rocket motor or a compressed-air jet exhausting through an ejector tube to simulate the turbojet engine of the airplane. The gyroscopic effects of the engine were simulated by a flywheel driven by compressed-air jets. In hovering flight the model was controlled by jet-reaction controls which consisted of a swiveling nozzle on the main jet and a movable nozzle on each wing tip; and in forward flight the model was controlled by elevons and a rudder. If the gyroscopic effects of the jet engine were not represented, the model could be flown satisfactorily in hovering flight without any automatic stabilization devices. When the gyroscopic effects of the jet engine were represented, however, the model could not be controlled without the aid of artificial stabilizing devices because of the gyroscopic coupling of the yawing and pitching motions. The use of pitch and yaw dampers made these motions completely stable and the model could then be controlled very easily. In the transition flight tests, which were performed only with the automatic pitch and yaw dampers operating, it was found that the transition was very easy to perform either with or without the engine gyroscopic effects simulated, although the model had a tendency to fly in a rolled and sideslipped attitude at angles of attack between approximately 25 deg and 45 deg because of static directional instability in this range.

Smith, Charles C., Jr.↗
NASA NTRS1971

Digital autopilots: Design considerations and simulator evaluations

The development of a digital autopilot program for a transport aircraft and the evaluation of that system's performance on a transport aircraft simulator is discussed. The digital autopilot includes three axis attitude stabilization, automatic throttle control and flight path guidance functions with emphasis on the mode progression from descent into the terminal area through automatic landing. The study effort involved a sequence of tasks starting with the definition of detailed system block diagrams of control laws followed by a flow charting and programming phase and concluding with performance verification using the transport aircraft simulation. The autopilot control laws were programmed in FORTRAN 4 in order to isolate the design process from requirements peculiar to an individual computer.

Osder, S.↗
NASA NTRS1986

Anthropometric considerations for a 4-axis side-arm flight controller

A data base on multiaxis side-arm flight controls was generated. The rapid advances in fly-by-light technology, automatic stability systems, and onboard computers have combined to create flexible flight control systems which could reduce the workload imposed on the operator by complex new equipment. This side-arm flight controller combines four controls into one unit and should simplify the pilot's task. However, the use of a multiaxis side-arm flight controller without complete cockpit integration may tend to increase the pilot's workload.

Debellis, W. B.↗
NASA NTRS1987

Cavity-Modulation Autotuner For Hydrogen Maser

Cavity-modulation tuning system maintains resonance of hydrogen-maser cavity automatically, stabilizing maser frequency, without introducing undesirable frequency modulation. System tunes maser cavity rapidly by modulating one of physical characteristics of cavity affecting resonant frequency. Frequency-controlling components of tuning system placed at maser cavity, within maser vacuum. Thermal environment well controlled, and device insensitive to driving signal. Features contribute to stability of maser frequency.

Dick, G. J.↗
NASA NTRS1956

An Optimum Switching Criterion for a Third-order Contactor Acceleration Control System

A switching criterion for optimum performance of a third-order contractor acceleration control system having complex roots is presented. Analytical and analog-computer methods are utilized to determine this criterion. The resulting optimum transient responses are presented and compared with those of an equivalent linear system.

CONTROL, AUTOMATIC↗
NASA NTRS2008

Onboard Image Registration from Invariant Features

This paper describes a feature-based image registration technique that is potentially well-suited for onboard deployment. The overall goal is to provide a fast, robust method for dynamically combining observations from multiple platforms into sensors webs that respond quickly to short-lived events and provide rich observations of objects that evolve in space and time. The approach, which has enjoyed considerable success in mainstream computer vision applications, uses invariant SIFT descriptors extracted at image interest points together with the RANSAC algorithm to robustly estimate transformation parameters that relate one image to another. Experimental results for two satellite image registration tasks are presented: (1) automatic registration of images from the MODIS instrument on Terra to the MODIS instrument on Aqua and (2) automatic stabilization of a multi-day sequence of GOES-West images collected during the October 2007 Southern California wildfires.

descriptors↗
NASA NTRS1976

A method for predicting the stability in roll of automatically controlled aircraft based on the experimental determination of the characteristics of an automatic pilot

A method is suggested for predicting the stability of automatically controlled aircraft by a comparison of calculated frequency-response curves for the aircraft and experimentally determined frequency-response curves for the automatic pilot. The method is applied only to stabilization in roll. The method is expected to be useful as a means of establishing the specifications of the performance required of the automatic control device for pilotless aircraft designed as missiles.

Jones, R. T.↗
NASA NTRS1940

A theoretical study of lateral stability with an automatic pilot

The influence of automatic operation of the aileron and rudder controls on the lateral stability of an airplane is discussed. The control deflections are assumed to be proportional to the deviations and to the rates of deviation of the airplane from steady-flight conditions. The effects of changes in the types of deviation governing control application are considered. For one simple method of control in which the aileron deflection is proportional to the angle of bank and the rudder deflection is proportional to the angle of yaw, the effect of lag in control application is studied and regions of stability with and without lag are given. For the simple control with lag, curves are included that show the variations in the roots of the stability equation with changes in the amount of control applied. It is concluded that, although the simple control provides a satisfactory means of varying most of the lateral stability characteristics, the stability in azimuth will always be poor for such a control.

Imlay, Frederick H↗
DOE OSTI2024

Continuous automatic polarization channel stabilization from heterodyne detection of coexisting dim reference signals

Quantum networking continues to encode information in polarization states due to ease and precision. The variable environmental polarization transformations induced by deployed fiber need correction for deployed quantum networking. Here, we present a method for automatic polarization compensation (APC) and demonstrate its performance on a metropolitan quantum network. Designing an APC involves many design decisions as indicated by the diversity of previous solutions in the literature. Our design leverages heterodyne detection of wavelength-multiplexed dim classical references for continuous high-bandwidth polarization measurements used by newly developed multi-axis (non-)linear control algorithm(s) for complete polarization channel stabilization with no downtime. This enables continuous relatively high-bandwidth correction without significant added noise from classical reference signals. We demonstrate the performance of our APC using a variety of classical and quantum characterizations. Finally, we use C-band and L-band APC versions to demonstrate continuous high-fidelity entanglement distribution on a metropolitan quantum network with an average relative fidelity of 0.94 ± 0.03 for over 30 hrs.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗