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Integrated Extremal Control and Explicit Guidance for Quadcopters

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A Correction to this article was published on 05 April 2021

A Correction to this article was published on 29 August 2020

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Abstract

The research study aims to create a framework for autonomous control technology for unmanned aerial vehicles with real-time target-relative guidance capabilities, which leverages onboard decision-making to provide targeting and re-targeting solutions. Thus, this paper aims to develop extremal control and guidance functions in the context of the optimal control problem and their integration for applications. Solving the optimal control problem leads to a constant motor thrust case and trivial and nontrivial cases for the variable motor thrust case. As illustrative examples, two quadcopter maneuvers use integrated extremal control and explicit guidance. The first maneuver is the quadcopter taking off to the desired altitude using maximum and then intermediate thrust. The second maneuver has the quadcopter traveling to a waypoint over an agricultural field. The DJI Onboard Software Development Kit provides a method to implement the proposed integration of extremal control and explicit guidance onboard a Raspberry Pi connected to the DJI M100 quadcopter. Simulated and experimental flight tests demonstrate that the integration of extremal control and explicit guidance allows the DJI M100 to reach the desired locations and velocities for both maneuvers.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive criticism and feedback in improving this article. The authors would also like to give special thanks to Sean Tadekawa and Kevin Williams for their assistance with flight tests, DJI OSDK implementation, and computing the DJI M100 physical parameters. The research presented in this paper has been supported, in part, by the NASA-funded EPSCoR - Autonomous Control Technologies Unmanned Aerial Systems project.

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  1. Mechanical Engineering, University of Hawaii: Manoa Holmes Hall, 2540 Dole Street, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA

    Evan Kawamura & Dilmurat Azimov

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  1. Evan Kawamura
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Correspondence to Evan Kawamura.

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Kawamura, E., Azimov, D. Integrated Extremal Control and Explicit Guidance for Quadcopters. J Intell Robot Syst 100, 1583–1613 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-020-01211-2

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