Geometric tracking control of thrust vectoring UAVs

TL;DR

This paper introduces a geometric control method for UAVs with thrust vectoring, enabling effective trajectory tracking by decoupling position and orientation, applicable even with limited thrust vectoring capabilities.

Contribution

The paper develops a novel geometric control law on SE(3) for thrust vectoring UAVs, independent of configuration parametrization, and handles limited thrust vectoring scenarios.

Findings

Control law achieves effective trajectory tracking.

Region of attraction and convergence properties are characterized.

Numerical example validates the control approach.

Abstract

In this paper a geometric approach to the trajectory tracking control of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles with thrust vectoring capabilities is proposed. The control design is suitable for aerial systems that allow to effectively decouple position and orientation tracking tasks. The control problem is developed within the framework of geometric control theory on the group of rigid displacements SE(3), yielding a control law that is independent of any parametrization of the configuration space. The proposed design works seamlessy when the thrust vectoring capability is limited, by prioritizing position over orientation tracking. A characterization of the region of attraction and of the convergence properties is explicitly derived. Finally, a numerical example is presented to test the proposed control law. The generality of the control scheme can be exploited for a broad class of aerial vehicles.