Lyapunov Based 3D Path Following Kinematic Controller for a Fixed Wing UAV

International audiencePath following is a basic autonomous navigation capability for UAV’s and in this paper we present a nonlinear 3D path following kinematic controller. In order to solve this problem, we use the typical multi-loop control structure in which the navigation controller directs the aircraft to the desired path, while the inner loop acts as an autopilot which stabilizes the nonlinear dynamics and tracks the command generated by the outer loop. Under the assumption that the autopilot is well tuned and the airspeed, fight-path angle, and bank angle states converge to the desired response to their commanded values, we use a kinematic model as a suitable control model for the fixed wing UAV. With the introduction of a virtual target, the proposed Lyapunov based kinematic controller for outer loop can steer the UAV asymptotically to approach the desired path. The proposed controller is validated in a 6-DoF simulation environment platform named MAV3DSim