Neural Networks Structured for Control Application to Aircraft Landing

Charles Schley, Yves Chauvin, Van Henkle, Richard M. Golden

Abstract: We present a generic neural network architecture capable of con(cid:173) trolling non-linear plants. The network is composed of dynamic. parallel, linear maps gated by non-linear switches. Using a recur(cid:173) rent form of the back-propagation algorithm, control is achieved by optimizing the control gains and task-adapted switch parame(cid:173) ters. A mean quadratic cost function computed across a nominal plant trajectory is minimized along with performance constraint penalties. The approach is demonstrated for a control task con(cid:173) sisting of landing a commercial aircraft in difficult wind conditions. We show that the network yields excellent performance while re(cid:173) maining within acceptable damping response constraints.