(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2005-08)
Sattigeri, Ramachandra J.; Calise, Anthony J.; Kim, Byoung Soo; Volyanskyy, Konstantin; Kim, Nakwan
This paper presents an adaptive guidance and control law algorithm for implementation
on a pair of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in a 6 DOF leader-follower formation flight
simulation. The objective of the simulation study is to prepare for a flight test involving a
pair of UAVs in formation flight where the follower aircraft will be equipped with an
onboard camera to estimate the relative distance and orientation to the leader aircraft. The
follower guidance law is an adaptive acceleration based guidance law designed for the
purpose of tracking a maneuvering leader aircraft. We also discuss the limitations of a
preceding version of the guidance algorithm shown in a previous paper. Finally, we discuss
the design of an adaptive controller (autopilot) to track the commands from the guidance
algorithm. Simulation results for different leader maneuvers are presented and analyzed.