Raytheon UCAV Demonstrator

Raytheon UCAV Demonstrator


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Challenge: DARPA sponsored the original Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle (UCAV) competition among some of the largest aircraft contractors. As a participant, Raytheon was developing a delta slumped wing, tailless aircraft and needed a flight control system to handle the highly unstable nature of this type of UCAV.

Solution: To prove that flight controls from Athena Technologies, now Rockwell Collins, could quickly and reliably fly Raytheon's UCAV, we created our own quarter-scale version of the Raytheon demonstrator incorporating our flight control and navigation system.

We also utilized our patented Feedback LTI'zation design approach that enables us to produce out of the box, robust, multivariable, full-flight envelope control designs for any vehicle configuration (fixed wing, helicopter, ducted fan, etc.) with one, or a very small number, of design points. The underlying mathematics inherently ensures stability and robustness throughout, regardless of the complexity and non-linearity of the system. This is done at a fraction of the cost and time it takes to design such control systems using traditional gain scheduling techniques.

Results: We flew the subscale version of the Raytheon demonstrator UCAV in 120 days, a record period of time for such an unstable aircraft and proved to DARPA and Raytheon the reliability and low life cycle cost of using our proven flight control systems.