This study introduces an improvedA*algorithm for the real-time path planning of Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs) in a 3D large-scale battlefield environment to solve the problem that UAVs require high survival rates and low fuel consumption. The algorithm is able to find the optimal path between two waypoints in the target space and comprehensively takes factors such as altitude, detection probability, and path length into account. It considers the maneuverability constraints of the UAV, including the safety altitude, climb rate, and turning radius, to obtain the final flyable path. Finally, the authors test the algorithm in an approximately 2,500,000 square meter area containing radars, no-fly zones, and extreme weather conditions to measure its feasibility, stability, and efficiency.

Unmanned aerial manipulator (UAM) is usually a combination of a quadrotor and a robotic arm that can exert active influences on the environments. The control problems of the UAM system include model uncertainty caused by its center of gravity shift and external disturbances from the environments. To handle these two disturbances, a tracking control strategy is proposed for position and attitude control of the UAM in this paper. In particular, the model of the UAM is established considering with center of gravity shift and disturbances from environments. In the position control, both internal disturbances and external disturbances are compensated by using a sliding mode controller. In the attitude control, an adaptive law is designed to estimate internal disturbances, and a disturbance observer is designed to estimate external disturbances. The stability analysis of the proposed controller is provided and the effectiveness of the proposed method is verified in simulation.

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the distributed formation control problem for a multi-quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle system without linear velocity feedbacks. Design/methodology/approach A nonlinear controller is proposed based on the orthogonal group SE(3) to obviate singularities and ambiguities of the traditional parameterized attitude representations. A cascade structure is applied in the distributed controller design. The inner loop is responsible for attitude control, and the outer loop is responsible for translational dynamics. To ensure a linear-velocity-free characteristic, some auxiliary variables are introduced to construct virtual signals in distributed controller design. The stability analysis of the proposed distributed control method by the Lyapunov function is provided as well. Findings A group of four quadrotors with constant reference linear velocity and a group of six quadrotors with varying reference linear velocity are adopted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed strategy. Originality/value This is a new innovation for multi-robot formation control method to improve assembly automation.

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Unmanned aerial manipulator (UAM) that integrates an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and an aerial manipulator extends the capability of the underlying UAV to a wide range of potential applications, such as flexible inspection, interactive manipulation, and scientific sampling. Typical challenges faced by UAM surveillance include maintaining a surveillance distance, eliminating disturbances caused by model uncertainties and the external environment, and adjusting the camera's orientations. Focused on the development of autonomous control for UAM during a process of flexible inspection, this paper presents a novel control scheme for autonomous inspection that is required to cope with model uncertainties and external disturbances. First, surveillance waypoints are obtained with respect to inspective objects and the radius of geometric relationship. In particular, the desired linear velocities are obtained through consideration of the angular velocity of the surveillance and the objective inspective radius. A robust controller is designed to ensure the tracking performance of the given UAM. Second, a disturbance observer is adopted to eliminate the model uncertainties and external disturbances. Finally, according to inspection requirements, the orientation of the onboard manipulator is adjusted so that the end effector (camera) of orientation is towards the object sustainably. The stability analysis of the proposed controller is provided. Experimental simulations demonstrate that the proposed approach enables the UAM to accurately track prescribed waypoints.