MOTION PLANNING AND OPTIMAL CONTROL OF AN AUTONOMOUS VTOL AIRCRAFT

This study presents a simple algorithm for motion-planning and state-to-state control of a Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) aircraft. The proposed motion-planning procedure is based on the solution of a linear algebraic equation. The resulting schemes are useful for flight control of an autonomous VTOL aircraft in case the objective is to transfer the system from a given state to a prescribed target. The proposed controller minimizes a selected quadratic index of performance. The solution to the (sub) optimal control problem is simple and reduces to the evaluation of a minimum point of a function of several variables.