Bilinear Interpolation of Three–Dimensional Gain–Scheduled Autopilots

Abstract

Gain-scheduled autopilots have emerged as a dominant strategy to achieve adaptive control of coupled, non-linear engineering complexities, owing to an ability to adapt to changing operational conditions and uncertainties. This study focuses on utilizing bilinear interpolation of gain-scheduled autopilots, emphasizing enhanced system performance and robustness. Through a comprehensive investigation and comparative analysis using three disparate cases, advantages over conventional methods are revealed. Strengths and weaknesses of both simple and specialized variants (such as linear, and real-time gain-scheduling) are introduced. Three missile guidance case–studies utilize simulation time and miss distance figures of merit. Comparing the performance of bilinear interpolation and automatic instantiations to index–search, over comparable traveled distances, missile miss distances were improved 179% and 196% respectively with slightly improved computational burden.