Technologies for Distributed Flight Control Systems: a Review

This paper reviews the state of the art (SOTA) in distributed flight control technologies using publicly available, scientific and technical publications. Technological developments, such as embedded computing and microelectromechanical systems are enabling advanced aerospace-oriented distributed systems. Distributed systems are comprised of a large number of simple elements, each with its own sensing, actuation and control, in order to obtain the desired behaviour. These systems have the potential to be more economic than a centralized system due to the simplicity of individual components, and possibility of using the same production unit for a different role within the system. The challenge with these systems is the coordination amongst nodes comprising a distributed control network. Benefits of distributed architecture are increased robustness trough redundancy and inherent fault tolerance. The SOTA summary comprises a description of challenges in the design of flight control systems with a distributed structure, technologies currently used in flight control systems and also technologies not specifically related to distributed flight control but applicable for the design of future flight control strategies. Described systems and technologies are represented with examples of real systems including swarms of small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and distributed networks for Fault Detection and Isolation.