Fixed Wing UAV Path Following in Wind With Input Constraints

Author

Beard, R.W. ; Ferrin, Jeff ; Humpherys, Jeffrey

Author_Institution

Electr. & Comput. Eng. Dept., Brigham Young Univ., Provo, UT, USA

Volume

22

Issue

6

fYear

2014

fDate

Nov. 2014

Firstpage

2103

Lastpage

2117

Abstract

This paper considers the problem of fixed wing unmanned air vehicles following straight lines and orbits. To account for ambient winds, we use a path following approach as opposed to trajectory tracking. The unique feature of this paper is that we explicitly account for roll and flight path angle constraints. The guidance laws are derived using the theory of nested saturations, and explicit flight conditions are derived that guarantee convergence to the path. The method is validated by simulation and flight tests.

Keywords

aerospace components; aerospace simulation; aircraft testing; autonomous aerial vehicles; path planning; wind; ambient winds; explicit flight conditions; fixed wing UAV path following; fixed wing unmanned air vehicles; flight path angle constraints; flight test; guidance laws; input constraints; nested saturation theory; roll angle constraints; simulation; trajectory tracking; Kinematics; Motion planning; Nonlinear control systems; Orbits; Unmanned aerial vehicles; Aircraft Navigation; motion planning; nonlinear control systems; unmanned systems; unmanned systems.;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Control Systems Technology, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1063-6536

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TCST.2014.2303787

Filename

6740857