R, Saurav (IIT Madras), Laad, Dhruv (Indian Institute of Technology Madras), Ghosh, Satadal (Indian Institute of Technology Madras)

Variable L1 Guidance Strategy for Path Following of UAVs

Scheduled for presentation during the Regular Session "Airspace Management" (FrB4), Friday, September 4, 2020, 12:10−12:30, Naousa

2020 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS), September 1-4, 2020 (Postponed from June 9-12, 2020), Athens, Greece

This information is tentative and subject to change. Compiled on April 25, 2024

Abstract

In this paper the problem of path following or trajectory tracking by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is considered. Several guidance laws have been presented in literature to this end. Among them, $L_1$ guidance strategy, which has similarity with proportional navigation guidance, has received most attention. However, the constant value of look-ahead distance $L_1$ considered in that guidance algorithm poses a drawback that leads to degraded performance in path following for varied range of radius of curvature of paths. To obviate this drawback, this paper presents a variable $L_1$ path-following guidance strategy, which relies on the consideration of a pre-fixed allowable settling time and a pre-fixed allowable peak overshoot, related to allowable maximum cross-track error, in path following performance of the UAV. Simulation studies are presented to validate the better performance of the presented variable $L_1$ guidance algorithm over the existing constant $L_1$ algorithm in following reference paths containing segments with varied radii of curvature.