Real-Time Flight Path Optimization for Tracking Stop-and-Go Targets with Micro Air Vehicles

Abstract

This research effort focuses on using a heuristic approach to determine the optimal flight path required to put an Unmanned Aircraft System's (UAS) sensor on a moving target in the presence of a constant wind field. This thesis builds on past work using dynamic optimization techniques to calculate minimum time to target. The computationally intensive dynamic optimization routines in their current form take a prohibitive amount of time to calculate and ultimately result in erroneous flight path predictions due to inherent execution time latencies. Therefore an iterative, suboptimal heuristic approach was explored to mitigate excessive calculation times and ultimately yield improved flight path predictions. This report not only explores the heuristic techniques used for flight path calculation, but also includes real world application and flight test results in a Micro Air Vehicle equipped with an autopilot.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 01, 2008
Accession Number
ADA484680

Entities

People

  • Nate A. Terning

Organizations

  • Air Force Institute of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Autonomy
  • Sensors
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Aircrafts
  • Airframes
  • Automatic Pilots
  • Control Systems
  • Global Positioning Systems
  • Guidance
  • Inertial Navigation
  • Inertial Navigation Systems
  • Micro Air Vehicles
  • Moving Targets
  • Navigation
  • Target Recognition
  • Unmanned Aerial Systems
  • Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
  • Unmanned Systems
  • Unmanned Vehicles

Fields of Study

  • Engineering

Readers

  • Applied Combinatorial Optimization and Logic Circuit Design.
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
  • Missile Defense Systems.

Technology Areas

  • Autonomy
  • Space
  • Space - Spacecraft Maneuvers