Extremal Control and Modified Explicit Guidance for Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Abstract

This study aims to develop and integrate guidance and control functions for applications such as rendezvous and docking, trajectory planning, entry descent and landing, executing maneuvers, and minimum fuel consumption. The utility of integrated nonlinear optimal control and explicit guidance functions replaces linear proportional-integral-derivative (PID) control laws. This approach leverages unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) flight autonomy, thereby paving the way for creating an autonomous control technology with real-time target-relative guidance and re-targeting capabilities. A 360 deg roll maneuver combines extremal control and modified explicit guidance in which “explicit” means the acceleration commands are functions of time. The roll maneuver accurately reaches the desired position and velocity vectors through the proposed integration. Satisfying the first-order necessary optimality conditions demonstrates that the roll maneuver has extremal trajectories. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first time analyzing and testing the Weierstrass condition and the first- and second-order conditions of optimality for UAVs. Second-order conditions show that the 360 deg roll maneuver with explicit rotational attitude guidance does not have an optimal trajectory but yields an extremal trajectory.