Towards Robust Optimization-Based Autonomous Dynamic Soaring with a Fixed-Wing UAV

TL;DR

This paper presents a robust framework enabling fixed-wing UAVs to perform autonomous dynamic soaring by exploiting wind shear, with validated real-world flight tests and simulations demonstrating resilience to wind estimation errors.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel robust guidance and control framework for autonomous dynamic soaring that accounts for wind estimation errors and disturbances.

Findings

Successful real flight tests demonstrating robust path-following in wind conditions.

Simulation results showing stable dynamic soaring under varied wind and estimation errors.

Framework achieves near-unlimited flight by exploiting wind shear energy.

Abstract

Dynamic soaring is a flying technique to exploit the energy available in wind shear layers, enabling potentially unlimited flight without the need for internal energy sources. We propose a framework for autonomous dynamic soaring with a fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The framework makes use of an explicit representation of the wind field and a classical approach for guidance and control of the UAV. Robustness to wind field estimation error is achieved by constructing point-wise robust reference paths for dynamic soaring and the development of a robust path following controller for the fixed-wing UAV. Wind estimation and path tracking performance are validated with real flight tests to demonstrate robust path-following in real wind conditions. In simulation, we demonstrate robust dynamic soaring flight subject to varied wind conditions, estimation errors and disturbances. Together, our results strongly indicate the ability of the proposed framework to achieve autonomous dynamic soaring flight in wind shear.