Aggressive Maneuver Regulation of a Quadrotor UAV

Abstract

In this paper we design a nonlinear controller for aggressive maneuvering of a quadrotor. We take a maneuver regulation perspective. Differently from the classical trajectory tracking approach, maneuver regulation does not require following a timed reference state, but a geometric "path" with a velocity (and possibly orientation) profile assigned on it. The proposed controller relies on three main ideas. Given a desired maneuver, i.e., a set of state trajectories equivalent under time translations, the system dynamics is decomposed into dynamics longitudinal and transverse to the maneuver. A space-dependent version of the transverse dynamics is derived, by using the longitudinal state, i.e., the arc-length of the path, as an independent variable. Then the controller is obtained as a function of the arc-length consisting of two terms: a feedforward term, being the nominal input to apply when on the path at the current arc-length, and a feedback term exponentially stabilizing the state-dependent transverse dynamics. Numerical computations are presented to prove the effectiveness of the proposed strategy. The controller performances are tested in presence of uncertainty of the model parameters and input noise and saturations. The controller is also tested in a realistic simulation environment validated against an experimental test-bed.

Minimum-Time Trajectory Generation for Quadrotors in Constrained Environments

“…As an additional requirement, the quadrotor must reach a neighborhood of x w0 at the end of its motion. In order to fulfil this objective, we consider the final constraint (30) with c f,i (x wi (L)) as in (31), wherex wi,min = x wi,0 − tol i , x wi,max = x wi,0 + tol i , tol i is a given tolerance and x wi,0 is the i-th component of x w0 . Results are depicted in Figures 3, 4, 5.…”

“…The thrust F (blue line in Figure 6e) always takes the upper bound. We execute the computed minimum-time trajectory on the CrazyFlie nano-quadrotor by using the closed-loop, maneuver regulation controller developed in [31], in which the minimumtime trajectory is used for the desired maneuver. The maneuver regulation controller computes thrust and angular rate virtual inputs, which are tracked by the standard off-the-shelf angular rate controller provided on board the CrazyFlie.…”

From tracking to robust maneuver regulation: An easy-to-design approach for VTOL aerial robots

“…where Q(ψ) := sψ cψ −cψ sψ is invertible with inverse Q(ψ) −1 = Q(ψ) T . By replacing (12) in (13), equations (13) become…”

Asynchronous Event-based Line Tracking for Time-to-Contact Maneuvers in UAS

“…Although many successful control methods have obtained outstanding results for aggressive maneuvers, see e.g. [1] [4], they are out of the scope of this paper. This paper presents an event-based perception scheme for agile aerial robot maneuvers.…”