Autonomous Navigation of an Unmanned Air Vehicle Towards a Moving Ship
Fethi Belkhouche · Advanced Robotics · 2008
This paper deals with the problem of autonomous navigation of an unmanned air vehicle towards a moving ship. The ship is moving in the horizontal plane; however, its motion is not a priori known to the air vehicle. The control laws for the flight path angle and the heading angle of the air vehicle are based on the relative kinematics equations between the vehicle and the moving ship. The goal of the control law is to drive the vertical line of sight angle to zero, while the horizontal line of sight angle tracks the heading angle of the ship. This results in a decreasing range in both the horizontal and vertical planes. The kinematics equations under the control law are derived and our results are rigorously proven. Simulation of various scenarios is carried out.