Path following system of small unmanned autonomous vehicle for surveillance application

A path following flight control is developed to be implemented in a small UAV system. The path following control is designed such that the UAV is able to follow smooth flight-paths within its maneuvering capabilities. Payload space, weight, and power source constraints dictate the system to be designed with limited application of sensors and actuators, while it is still required to be able to perform its mission within a predefined measures. The control scheme is intended to be able to steer the UAV flight close to a predefined path and control its heading angle accordingly. The controller principally works by driving the cross-track and course angle errors of the UAV flight, relative to the desired path, to zero, through performing Bank to Turn (BTT) maneuvers. The system generates corrective commands based on the error information and transforms it into a heading change via roll maneuver. The roll maneuver controller is designed using LQR technique such that it can provide an appropriate roll dynamics of the UAV. Simulation results will be presented and analyzed to investigate the performance of the proposed system.