Design of Three-Dimensional Path Following Guidance Logic

Sungsu Park

doi:10.1155/2018/9235124

Abstract

This paper presents a three-dimensional path following guidance logic. The proposed guidance logic is composed of the guidance law and the motion strategy of virtual target along the desired path. The guidance law makes a vehicle purse the virtual target, and the motion strategy explicitly specifies the motion of virtual target by introducing the concept of the projection point and the tangentially receding distance. The proposed logic is simple and efficient and yet provides precise path following. Numerical simulations are performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed guidance logic.

Highlights

Path following problem is to design a guidance law that will make a vehicle to follow a desired path
The desired path usually consists of consecutive segments which are comprised of circular arc and straight-line path
The path following guidance law specifies command acceleration that is applied to the vehicle, and the control law of the vehicle follows the command generated by the guidance law

Summary

Introduction

Path following problem is to design a guidance law that will make a vehicle to follow a desired path. Recent common approach [7,8,9,10,11,12,13] is rewriting the path following problem as the classical line-of-sight guidance problem by specifying a moving virtual target along the desired path. The position of virtual target is not easy to determine, and the initial distance between the vehicle and the desired path should be less than the specified distance Some methods in this approach are still for the paths in planar motion [9,10,11,12,13]. Motivated by these observations, a new three-dimensional path following guidance logic is proposed in this paper.

Design of Guidance Law

Design of Virtual Target Motion

Simulations

Conclusions