A Controller Based on the Fusion of PVTOL Controllers for 3D Navigation of Autonomous Aerial Vehicles

Abstract

This paper proposes a control architecture based on the fusion of control actions generated by three simple controllers (PVTOL controllers, of the English Planar Vertical TakeOff and Landing) to guide autonomous aerial vehicles in 3D path positioning and tracking. Considering navigation as a task composed of the control of the orientation of the vehicle in relation to the target (associated with a Z-PVTOL controller), the control of its forward movement (associated with an XZ-PVTOL controller), and the Correction of any lateral displacement (associated with a YZ-PVTOL controller, similar to the XZ-PVTOL controller), our first approach consisted in executing said partial maneuvers one at a time, using the PVTOL controllers, switching from one to the other through the action of a supervisor. In this work the approach was changed, considering that the PVTOL controllers act simultaneously and generating the final control action by merging the control actions generated by them, thus gently coupling three very simple controllers. Experimental results are presented to validate the proposed approach, and its flight performance is compared with the performance corresponding to the switching strategy.