An Optimization-Based Guidance System for Tactical Multi-Rotor UAVs Mapping Contested Environments
Julius A. Marshall, Paul Binder, Andrea L’Afflitto · 2023
This paper presents an original guidance system for autonomous multi-rotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) tasked with creating maps of environments while operating in a tactical manner. An original algorithm is developed to produce a sequence of goal points whose locations enable exploration in a systematic or greedy manner, a path planner allows to interpolate goal points while exploiting obstacles for shelter, and a trajectory planner designed within the model predictive control framework enables collision-avoidance and accounts for the output feedback linearized dynamics, thrust saturation, and attitude constraints. This system assumes no prior information on the environment or threats, does not rely on external sources of information, and is equipped with forward-facing cameras to enable low altitude and indoor operations. Numerical simulations validate the proposed guidance system.