Design and flight testing of a digital optimal control general aviation autopilot (Q760391)

This paper presents the designs of proportional-integral-filter (PIF) autopilots for a General Aviation (NAVION) aircraft. The PIF autopilots use modern control theory to determine heading select and altitude select and hold autopilot modes. The PIF control law uses typical General Aviation sensors for state feedback; command error integration for command tracking; digital complementary filtering and analog prefiltering for sensor noise suppression; a control filter for computation delay accommodation; and the incremental form to eliminate trim values in implementation.