Keywords

Unmmaned aerial vehicle, uav, path planning, dynamic inversion, nonlinear autopilot

Abstract

The role of the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has significantly expanded in the military sector during the last decades mainly due to their cost effectiveness and their ability to eliminate the human life risk. Current UAV technology supports a variety of missions and extensive research and development is being performed to further expand its capabilities. One particular field of interest is the area of the low cost expendable UAV since its small price tag makes it an attractive solution for target suppression. A swarm of these low cost UAVs can be utilized as guided munitions or kamikaze UAVs to attack multiple targets simultaneously. The focus of this thesis is the development of a cooperative online path planning algorithm that coordinates the trajectories of these UAVs to achieve a simultaneous arrival to their dynamic targets. A nonlinear autopilot design based on the dynamic inversion technique is also presented which stabilizes the dynamics of the UAV in its entire operating envelope. A nonlinear high fidelity six degrees of freedom model of a fixed wing aircraft was developed as well that acted as the main test platform to verify the performance of the presented algorithms.

Notes

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Graduation Date

2012

Semester

Fall

Advisor

Qu, Zhihua

Degree

Master of Science in Electrical Engineering (M.S.E.E.)

College

College of Engineering and Computer Science

Department

Electrical Engineering and Computing

Degree Program

Electrical Engineering; Controls and Robotics

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0004613

URL

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0004613

Language

English

Release Date

December 2012

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Masters Thesis (Open Access)

Subjects

Dissertations, Academic -- Sciences, Sciences -- Dissertations, Academic

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