A path-following algorithm for missiles

The missile path-following problem has not been studied particularly as much as other vehicles. This fact is the source of our motivation behind this work. In this paper, a path-following algorithm, which is specifically designed for missiles but can be applied to other vehicles as well, is proposed. Presented algorithm is composed of a feedback and feed-forward control rule. Feedback controller part of the algorithm is the modified version of the Predictor-Corrector algorithm, which has a widespread usage in the field of robotics. This modification, which is proposed in this paper, is done by adding missile´s velocity as an adaptation variable. On the other hand, path´s centripetal acceleration is used as the feed-forward control term which leads to an enhancement in the overall performance of the algorithm by avoiding path-following errors due to curvatures. Proposed algorithm is tested in the developed point mass simulation and it is verified through simulations that the algorithm performs at least as well as expected and shows promising results for implementation.