An Optimization Problem for Quadcopter Reference Flight Trajectory Generation

Karam Eliker,Said Grouni,Guoqing Zhang,Weidong Zhang

doi:10.1155/2018/6574183

Abstract

This paper deals with the reference flight trajectory generation and planning problems for quadcopter Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). The reference flight trajectory is defined as the composition of path and motion functions. Both of them are generated by using quintic B-spline functions. Based on differential flatness approach, the quadcopter dynamical constraints are satisfied instantaneously by computing the induced aerodynamical moments and lift force. The optimal reference flight trajectory, with respect to the mission requirements and imposed constraints, is reached by manipulating the control points’ vectors of B-spline functions via a nonlinear constrained optimization method. The mission requirements are defined as a set of waypoints with their respective scheduled flight timetable. A minimum-energy cost function is developed to minimize the consumed energy and induced efforts by reference flight trajectory. For the need of the optimal overfly-times schedule, the overfly times with respect to the defined constraints and performance criteria are calculated. Numerical simulation results show the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed optimization method.

Highlights

With a vast proliferation of Manned Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), world air transportation traffic has witnessed a continuous increase causing a saturation in the airspace
The formal approach adopted by researchers to design the UAVs is to separate the avionics systems into three distinct and independent systems, which are Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC)
The need to integrate the UAVs in National Airspace System (NAS) is highly recommended

Summary

Introduction

With a vast proliferation of Manned Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), world air transportation traffic has witnessed a continuous increase causing a saturation in the airspace. Journal of Advanced Transportation constraints and performance criteria By generating such reference flight trajectory, different tasks such as delivering and reconnaissance missions at acceptable overfly times could be performed. The authors in [2,3,4,5,6,7] proposed an optimization approach to solve Time Optimal Motion Planning (TOMP) between two configuration points by using a Nonlinear Programming (NLP) method. In [19], a minimumenergy trajectory generation approach was proposed by defining the cost function as a function of the voltage and current across the four rotors The similarity among these papers was the reference trajectory planning problems, defined as longitudinal, lateral, and altitude displacements, as NLP problem between two configuration points, while the difference was related to the parameterization of the reference trajectory. Several configurations are studied and numerical simulation results show the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed optimization method

Quadcopter Flight Dynamics

Optimization Problem Formulation

Performance Criterion

Numerical Simulations

Conclusion