EDWARDS TO TEST TEACHABLE PLANE : AIRCRAFT'S CONTROL SYSTEM `LEARNS AS IT FLIES'.

Byline: Jim Skeen Daily News Staff Writer

A 70-pound, 100-inch-long aircraft controlled through a sophisticated system that ``learns as it flies'' will be tested at Edwards this summer, NASA and Air Force officials said Friday.

Directed by a pilot on the ground, the Low-Observable Flight Test Experiment aircraft uses a network of control systems, or nodes, which program officials described as interacting in a similar fashion to the human brain's neurons.

The network learns by doing, program officials said.

The network is capable of continually altering the aircraft's flight controls to optimize performance and take the pilot's responses into consideration. Such a system could help pilots fly during situations in which they must make decisions quickly and help damaged aircraft land safely, even when controls are partially destroyed.

The wedge-shaped aircraft made its debut Friday at the Oshkosh Air Show in Wisconsin. The aircraft is scheduled to be flown by C-130 transport to Point Mugu and then shipped by truck to NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center on Monday for preparation for the flight test program.

About a dozen flights will be conducted, primarily landing and landing-approach tests. The aircraft will be flown under speeds of about 250 mph and probably no higher than 6,000 feet, said Robert Pap, president of Accurate Automaton Corp., a Chattanooga, Tenn., company that put the network into the aircraft.

``It adapts to its environment,'' Pap said. ``It's gone through 190 wind tunnel tests at Langley (NASA's Langley Flight Research Center in Virginia) in the 12-foot tunnel and the 30-foot tunnel. Now it's going into the ultimate wind tunnel: Mother Nature.''

The airplane uses a design being considered for a possible hypersonic aircraft that would be able to fly more than five times the speed of sound - 3,600 mph, or a mile every second. The design is called a ``wave rider,'' in which the aircraft actually rides on its own shock wave.

``It allows us to have a database about how you build and fly a Mach 5 aircraft,'' Pap said. ``A lot of the technology will go into general aviation. The general public will get a lot of benefit from it.''

The main objectives of the program are to demonstrate the utility of the flight control system and to do low-speed demonstrations of the design concept, officials said.