Case Study: Boeing achieves autonomous runway landing of unpiloted X-40A spacecraft with MathWorks MATLAB and Simulink

MATLAB And Simulink Help Land Unpiloted Boeing Spacecraft

Boeing needed a rapid, low-cost guidance, navigation, and control (GN&C) system for the X-40A unpiloted, unpowered reusable spacecraft that could autonomously approach and land on a standard runway. Facing strict time, funding, and resource limits, a small Boeing team chose MathWorks products — including MATLAB, Simulink, Simulink Coder and several toolboxes (Control System, Robust Control, Statistics and Machine Learning, and Simulink Design Optimization) — to design reusable, model-based flight-control laws and prototype avionics and sensor software.

Using MathWorks tools, engineers modeled and simulation-tested control laws, auto-generated C code, validated results against a modified Fortran autoland simulation, and ran Monte Carlo analyses; the initial GN&C implementation took six weeks and subsequent updates one week each. The MathWorks-based solution delivered a successful free-flight landing (released from 9,000 ft), met budget and schedule goals, produced identical C/Fortran validation results, and helped Boeing win a follow-on contract to develop an unpiloted space plane capable of reaching Mach 25.

Boeing

John Fuller

Project Manager