Integrated Extremal Control and Explicit Guidance for Quadcopters

Abstract

The research study aims to create a framework for autonomous control technology for unmanned aerial vehicles with real-time target-relative guidance capabilities, which leverages onboard decision-making to provide targeting and re-targeting solutions. Thus, this paper aims to develop extremal control and guidance functions in the context of the optimal control problem and their integration for applications. Solving the optimal control problem leads to a constant motor thrust case and trivial and nontrivial cases for the variable motor thrust case. As illustrative examples, two quadcopter maneuvers use integrated extremal control and explicit guidance. The first maneuver is the quadcopter taking off to the desired altitude using maximum and then intermediate thrust. The second maneuver has the quadcopter traveling to a waypoint over an agricultural field. The DJI Onboard Software Development Kit provides a method to implement the proposed integration of extremal control and explicit guidance onboard a Raspberry Pi connected to the DJI M100 quadcopter. Simulated and experimental flight tests demonstrate that the integration of extremal control and explicit guidance allows the DJI M100 to reach the desired locations and velocities for both maneuvers.