Trajectory Guidance and Control for a Small UAV

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to present trajectory guidance and control system with a dynamic inversion for a small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The UAV model is expressed by fixed-mass rigid-body six-degree-of-freedom equations of motion, which include the detailed aerodynamic coefficients, the engine model and the actuator models that have lags and limits. A trajectory is generated from the given waypoints using cubic spline functions of a flight distance. The commanded values of an angle of attack, a sideslip angle, a bank angle and a thrust, are calculated from guidance forces to trace the flight trajectory. To adapt various waypoint locations, a proportional navigation is combined with the guidance system. By the decision logic, appropriate guidance law is selected. The flight control system to achieve the commands is designed using a dynamic inversion approach. For a dynamic inversion controller we use the two-timescale assumption that separates the fast dynamics, involving the angular rates of the aircraft, from the slow dynamics, which include angle of attack, sideslip angle, and bank angle. Some numerical simulations are conducted to see the performance of the proposed guidance and control system.