Trajectory control of autonomous fixed-wing aircraft performing multiple target passive detection and tracking

This paper presents progress made in a previously proposed algorithm for trajectory optimization of autonomous aerial vehicles performing multiple target tracking. The base algorithm, which was described in two earlier papers, involves a variant of the model predictive control approach, built on a partially observed Markov decision process (POMDP) model of the sensor-target system. In this paper modifications and additions made to deal with fixed-wing aircraft dynamics of the controlled vehicles are described and results of simulations involving multiple fixed-wing UAVs, no-fly zones and targets are presented.