A Novel Null-Space Based UAV Trajectory-tracking Controller with Collision Avoidance

MILTON SANTOS; CLAUDIO ROSALES; MÁRIO SARCINELLI-FILHO; RICARDO CARELLI

IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS

IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC

Año: 2017 vol. 16 p. 1 - 11

1083-4435

A new trajectory tracking controller with collision avoidance is proposed in this paper for UAV navigation. A positive potential function is designed to take into account the movement of obstacles. Thus, the controller with potential function guarantees that the UAV moves through areas of potentials closeto zero to ensure safe navigation in dynamic and unknown environments. Such a controller was designed with hierarchical objectives using behavioural-based approach. Actually, a null space-based controller is adopted, whose main objective is to ensure that the collision avoidance is achieved, whereas otherobjectives are projected onto the null space. Collision avoidance and trajectory tracking controllers generate reference velocities sent to a dynamic compensator to guarantee the tracking of such velocities, thus characterizing a cascade controller. Stability of the entire closed-loop nonlinear system is demonstrated through Lyapunov?s theory. A low-cost indoor framework with just one RGB-D sensor was used to estimate the positions of the UAV and obstacles. Simulation and experiments are run using a Parrot AR Drone quadrotor and considering a person as a dynamic obstacle for an AR Drone quadrotor, and some of their results are reported, to validate the proposed controller.