Minimum time trajectory for helicopter UAVS: Computation and flight test

Abstract

This paper serves as an integral part of a project in which the main objective is to develop the theory and algorithms of computational methods for optimal UAV trajectory planning in obstacle-rich environment. In this paper, we apply a Galerkin method of optimal control to the model of HeLion, a helicopter UAV developed by the UAV Team from the National University of Singapore (NUS). The goal of the project is to compute and test minimum-time trajectories for the unmanned system. We use nonlinear optimal control to formulate the problem, which is subject to the dynamical system of differential equations and state-control bounds of HeLion. The dynamical system is defined by a set of fifteen dimensional nonlinear differential equations. Different from previous papers on this model, more challenging constraints including higher order derivatives of the states are included in the formulation. The problem does not have an analytic solution. We numerically solve the problem using a Galerkin method. Then the computed trajectory is verified in flight tests using HeLion. © 2013 Michael Zhu et al.