Paper:
Language: English:

Planar Spline Trajectory Following for an Autonomous Helicopter

Kale Harbick^*, James F. Montgomery^**, and Gaurav S. Sukhatme^*

*Robotic Embedded Systems Laboratory Center for Robotics and Embedded Systems, Department of Computer Science
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0781, U.S.A.
**Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109-8099, U.S.A.

Received: June 29, 2003

Accepted: March 20, 2004

Keywords: path planning, robotic helicopter, UAV, trajectory following

Journal ref: Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence and Intelligent Informatics, Vol.8, No.3 pp. 237-242, 2004

Abstract

This paper proposes a technique for planar trajectory following for an autonomous aerial robot. A trajectory is modeled as a planar spline. A behavior-based control system which stabilizes the robot and enforces trajectory following, has been implemented and tested on an autonomous helicopter. Results from two flight experiments are presented. The trajectory tracking error is on the order of the size of the robot (1.8m). Given the inherent error in GPS positioning, and environmental disturbances (wind), this is quite reasonable.

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