Trajectory generation with piecewise constant acceleration and tracking control of a quadcopter

This paper describes a 3D reference trajectory generation and tracking control method for a quadcopter. The flying trajectory is a piecewise curve that passes through viapoints at specified times or speeds and has constant acceleration within each interval. The path is first represented as the third degree polynomials, and to overcome demerits of the C-splines, a numeric algorithm is suggested and implemented. The feasibility of the generated trajectory is checked by nonlinear dynamics model of a quadcopter. After executing several flying experiments for a quadcopter, tracking errors are evaluated.