Advanced Technology Institute of Commuter-helicopter, Ltd.

Other

Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd.

Kawasaki Jukogyo Kabushiki Kaisha

Yoshiharu Kubo

Takeshi Tomio

Yasuaki Tamura

Fumio Nakamura

Hiroshi Nakazawa

Kunihiko Mano

Ikuo Sudo

Takeo Senuma

Shinichiro Ina

Shigeru Tobari

Hideki Shirasaya

Munenori Ishikawa

A flight control apparatus for a helicopter is configured by: a control unit controlled by the pilot; a steering mechanism for generating an aerodynamic control force; a link mechanism for mechanically transmitting an amount of control Ma in the control unit to the steering mechanism, thereby driving the steering mechanism; an amount-of-control sensor for detecting the amount of control Ma in the control unit and for supplying a control signal Sa; a flight control law calculation unit for calculating a flight control law of the helicopter based on the control signal Sa, and for supplying a driving signal Sb for the steering mechanism; a difference calculation unit for subtracting the control signal Sa from the driving signal Sb, and for supplying a difference signal Sc; and a precision servo actuator unit for adding the amount of control Ma transmitted via the link mechanism, to an amount of difference Mc corresponding to the difference signal Sc. According to this configuration, the apparatus can be easily applied to a mechanical control transmission mechanism of an existing helicopter, and the characteristics and performance of the control transmission mechanism can be remarkably increased.

Flight control apparatus for helicopters

A servo actuator apparatus has: an actuator which relatively displaces an operation unit on the basis of an input signal E,; a position sensor which detects a relative position of the operation unit and outputs a detection signal D,; an actuator which relatively displaces an operation unit on the basis of an input signal E,; a position sensor which detects a relative position of the operation unit and outputs a detection signal D,; a difference calculation unit which subtracts the detection signal D,from a command signal C,supplied from a flight control computer, to output the input signal E,; and a difference calculation unit which subtracts the detection signal D,from a command signal C,supplied from a flight control computer, to output the input signal E,, where a positive displacement direction of the operation unit is reverse and series to that of the operation unit, and the body units of the actuators are integrally movable, and the actuators can always operate while mutually monitoring the actual operation, and have a function that, when one of the actuators fails and falls in hardover, the other actuator immediately corrects the hardover. In this way, prevention of a hardover or suppression of the degree of a hardover can be realized by a simple configuration.

Servo actuator apparatus and aircraft control apparatus

According to a first aspect of the invention, an optical position sensor employs a position encoder having collimators and reflectors with mutually aligned optical axes mounted in a support. A slotted code plate moves between the collimators and reflectors in a plane non-perpendicular to their optic axes. This encoder converts position to optical signals reliably, regardless of mechanical shock or vibration. According to a second aspect of the invention, an optical position sensing system employs wavelength-division multiplexing to distribute light pulses to different position encoders and time-division multiplexing to further distribute pluses to the collimators in each encoder. This permits multiple position encoders to be served by a single light source and optical fiber.

Wavelength-division multiplex digital optical position sensor

Growing community of inventors

Kakamigahara, Japan

Yoshiharu Kubo