WVHTC Foundation researchers are working with the Intelligent Flight Control System (IFCS) is a program at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center established to exploit a revolutionary technological breakthrough in aircraft flight controls that can efficiently optimize aircraft performance in both normal and failure conditions.

About Intelligent Flight Control
IFCS is designed to incorporate self-learning neural network concepts into flight control software to enable a pilot to maintain control and safely land an aircraft that has suffered a failure to a control surface or damage to the airframe.

The IFCS test aircraft is a highly-modified McDonnell-Douglas NF-15B Eagle that was formerly flown in the Advanced Control Technology for Integrated Vehicles project at NASA Dryden from 1996 through 1999.

The WVHTC Foundation teamed with NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, NASA Ames, and Boeing Phantom Works to develop and flight-test next generation adaptive flight control systems that increase the safety of future military and civilian aircraft.

Now in development is a direct adaptive neural network-based flight control system.

The direct adaptive approach incorporates neural networks that are applied directly to the flight control system feedback errors to provide adjustments to improve aircraft performance in both normal flight and with system failures. A secondary goal is to develop the processes of verification and validation of neural networks for use in flight critical applications.