AUTOPILOT DESIGN FOR BANK-TO-TURN MISSILES USING RECEDING HORIZON PREDICTIVE CONTROL SCHEME

Receding horizon predictive control (RHPC) methodology is applied to t he design of an autopilot for a bank to-turn missile. The main control objective is high tracking performance for guidance commands. The pro posed RHPC-based autopilot consists of the RHPC and the design algorit hm of future commands, The design algorithm of future commands determi nes future guidance commands required in the RHPC. It is based on the first-order approximation of the current guidance commands generated f rom the existing guidance law. The RHPC is designed for tracking contr ol of pitch acceleration, yaw acceleration, and roll rate, It is shown by computer simulation that the RHPC-based autopilot offers good trac king performance in six-degree-of-freedom environments, which results in low terminal miss distances even for maneuvering targets. Implement ation issues such as memory requirements and computing power are also discussed. We demonstrate that the RHPC-based autopilot can be impleme nted in real time.