Dynamic Attitude Planning for Trajectory Tracking in Thrust-Vectoring UAVs

Davide Invernizzi (1) , Marco Lovera (1) , Luca Zaccarian (2, 3)

1 POLIMI - Politecnico di Milano [Milan]
2 Dipartimento di Ingegneria Industriale [Trento]
3 LAAS-MAC - Équipe Méthodes et Algorithmes en Commande

This paper addresses the trajectory tracking control problem for underactuated UAVs, with specific focus on vehicles with thrustvectoring capabilities. According to the different actuation mechanisms, the most common UAV platforms can achieve only a partial decoupling of attitude and position tasks. Since position tracking is of utmost importance for applications involving aerial vehicles, we propose a control scheme in which position tracking is the primary objective. To this end, this work exploits the concept of attitude planner, a dynamical system through which the desired attitude reference is processed to guarantee the satisfaction of the primary objective: the attitude tracking task is considered as a secondary objective which can be realized as long as the desired trajectory satisfies specific trackability conditions.

Mots clés: UAVs; thrust vectoring; trajectory tracking

Domaines: Automatique / Robotique

Davide Invernizzi, Marco Lovera, Luca Zaccarian. Dynamic Attitude Planning for Trajectory Tracking in Thrust-Vectoring UAVs. IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 2020, 65 (1), pp.453-460. ⟨10.1109/TAC.2019.2919660⟩. ⟨hal-03029040⟩