Receding Horizon Control for Autonomous UAS Shipboard Landing with Tau Guidance and Polynomial Trajectory Planning
Open Access
- Author:
- Jaques, Emma
- Graduate Program:
- Aerospace Engineering
- Degree:
- Master of Science
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- November 29, 2023
- Committee Members:
- Jacob Willem Langelaan, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Joseph Francis Horn, Committee Member
Jacob Langelaan, Professor in Charge/Director of Graduate Studies
Eric Norman Johnson, Committee Member - Keywords:
- UAS
Receding Horizon Control
Path Planning
Tau Guidance
Trajectory Planning
Polynomial Path Planning
Second Order Tau Guidance
Nondimensionaization
Control Systems
Guidance
Navigation
Control - Abstract:
- It can be very difficult to autonomously land a small UAS (Unmanned Aerial System) on a ship deck that is in motion on the water in the presence of sea and air disturbance conditions. In this thesis, a technique was developed to perform receding horizon control using fast closed form path planning. This technique involves the use of second order tau guidance to determine an initial landing path and subsequent path re-plans at fixed intervals using fifth order Chebyshev polynomial path planning that enables matching of position, velocity, and acceleration at both the start and end of the path. The path is represented in non-dimensional form with position normalized by distance to goal and time normalized by the desired time-to-touchdown. Certain state-based criteria were chosen that would necessitate a go-around maneuver and path adjustments were made within each re-plan to determine if the criteria could be bypassed or if a go-around was needed. A simulation was built in MATLAB to test the receding horizon control system in a variety of light wind environments. This simulation was used to generate single-flight tests to view the calculated optimal flight paths in different disturbance environments. It was also used to generate Monte Carlo data sets to determine the best UAS beginning positional locations and the limits of disturbance tolerance to increase the odds of a successful shipboard landing.