Optimal control of a small fixed-wing UAV about concatenated trajectories

The paper focuses-on the control of a small fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) along trajectories. The trajectories are generated in real-time from a library of pre-specified motion primitives. Two concatenated primitive trajectories are considered: one formed from seven primitives and exhibiting a figure-8 geometric path and another composed of a Split-S maneuver that settles into a level-turn trim trajectory. Switched control systems stemming from l(2)-induced norm synthesis approaches are designed for discrete-time linearized models of the nonlinear UAV system. These controllers are analyzed based on simulations in a realistic operational environment and are further implemented on the physical UAV. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.