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Article: Aircraft Flight Control
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- Computer Sciences
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CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Aircraft Flight Control
Aircraft in flight require adherence to a specific course for long periods of time, which can be tiring for the pilot. Likewise, steering ships on the water for hours is tedious and leads to crew fatigue. For more than a century, ships have had auto-pilots or devices that maintain a heading without human operators. Controlling an aircraft is similar but more complex because an aircraft operates in three dimensions and travels at considerably higher speeds. In the air, small deviations can become large errors more quickly.
The automatic control of aircraft was not considered until aircraft were capable of practical long distance flight. In the 1920s when radio ...