A new cruise missile path tracking method based on second-order smoothing

Path smoothing is an efficient method to improve the tracking performance of a cruise missile during the process of path planning. In this paper, a new cruise missile path tracking method based on second-order smoothing is presented. First, the path of a cruise missile smoothing method is proposed to generate flyable path with continuous curvature in terms of the symmetrical polar polynomial curve. Second, with the presented conception of virtual missile, we design an optimal controller to track the path generated from the symmetrical polar polynomial curve. Finally, numerical example is also provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. It is shown that the proposed method is not only effective but also meeting the restriction of turning radius of the missile and precision tracking.