Geometry of Translational Trajectories for an Autonomous Vehicle With Wind Effect
Yasmina Bestaoui, H. Dahmani, Karim Belharet · 47th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting including The New Horizons Forum and Aerospace Exposition · 2009
Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) are being pursued as low-cost alternatives to expandable launch vehicles and shuttle. The first stage of the RLV under study is in fact constituted by a HALE Unmanned Aerial Vehicle that will return to its launching site after releasing the other stages. For an autonomous aerial vehicle to perform a specific operation, the trajectory generation is a fundamental part of its mission planning. For the purpose of flight path generation, it is usually sufficient to treat only the translational motion. The objective of this paper is threefold: to generate a desired flight path to be followed by the UAV at the release altitude , to analyze the possible release configurations and propose a simple way of re-planning reference trajectories of the last stages, when necessary. This work has been done under the auspices of the CNES (Centre National des Etudes Spatiales) within the PERSEUS Program.