15th Triennial World Congress of the International Federation of Automatic Control
  Barcelona, 21–26 July 2002 
REAL-TIME CONSTRAINED TRAJECTORY GENERATION APPLIED TO A FLIGHT CONTROL EXPERIMENT
Mark B. Milam* Ryan Franz** Richard M. Murray*
* Division of Engineering and Applied Science
Control and Dynamical Systems
California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, CA 91125
** Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309

A computational approach to generate real-time, optimal trajectories for a flight control experiment is presented. Minimum time trajectories are computed for hover-to-hover and forward flight maneuvers. Instantaneous changes in the trajectory constraints that model obstacles and threats are also investigated. Experimental results using the Nonlinear Trajectory Generation software package show good closed-loop performance for all maneuvers. Success of the algorithm demonstrates that high-confidence real-time trajectory generation is achievable in spite of the highly nonlinear and non-convex nature of the problem.
Keywords: Trajectory planning, real-time, optimal control, optimization, nonlinear control, guidance systems
Session slot T-Mo-M06: Aircraft Control/Area code 8a : Aerospace