Guidance and Control Co-Design for Enhanced Performance of Fixed-Wing UAVs
Research output: Contribution to journal › Conference article › Contributed › peer-review
Contributors
Abstract
This paper presents the design and flight test validation of a co-designed guidance and control system for a fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The co-design of all integrated control loops enables increased performance capabilities which are especially important for highly dynamic UAV missions. The control design is based on a mixed-sensitivity control approach to enable robust inner loop controls in the presence of uncertainties. The guidance design implements a look-ahead path following algorithm which enables superior performance metrics while considering the computational constraints present for small UAV systems. The co-designed guidance and control approach is applied to a small fixed-wing UAV and flight tested mimicking a highly dynamic urban flight trajectory. The flight-test results not only validate the seamless implementation of the developed algorithms on the available flightcontrol computer, but also demonstrate their robust performance during real-world operations.
Details
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | IFAC-PapersOnLine |
| Publication status | Accepted/In press - 2026 |
| Peer-reviewed | Yes |
Conference
| Title | 23rd World Congress of the International Federation of Automatic Control |
|---|---|
| Abbreviated title | IFAC World Congress 2026 |
| Conference number | 23 |
| Duration | 23 - 28 August 2026 |
| Website | |
| Location | BEXCO |
| City | Busan |
| Country | Korea, Republic of |