Software-Enabled Receding Horizon Control for Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Guidance

Abstract

This paper describes autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) guidance technologies developed and demon-strated in a flight test sponsored by the DARPA Software Enabled Control program. The flight experiment took place in June 2004 using a Boeing UAV testbed and demonstrated important autonomy capabilities enabled bya receding horizon guidance controller and fault detection filter. The receding horizon controller (RHC) design process is presented in detail as well as demonstration scenarios which were designed to exercise and evaluate the primary functionalities of the control system. Simulation results of the key capabilities are shown and compared with recorded flight data for evaluation purposes. Hardware-in-the-loop simulations and other high-fidelity test run results illustrate secondary capabilities such as controller reconfiguration due to actuator fault and maneuvering limit enforcement using output constraints in the receding horizon approach.