Date of Award
3-2008
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science in Aeronautical Engineering
Department
Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
First Advisor
Richard G. Cobb, PhD
Abstract
This research effort focuses on using a heuristic approach to determine the optimal flight path required to put an Unmanned Aircraft System’s (UAS) sensor on a moving target in the presence of a constant wind field. This thesis builds on past work using dynamic optimization techniques to calculate minimum time to target. The computationally intensive dynamic optimization routines in their current form take a prohibitive amount of time to calculate and ultimately result in erroneous flight path predictions due to inherent execution time latencies. Therefore an iterative, suboptimal heuristic approach was explored to mitigate excessive calculation times and ultimately yield improved flight path predictions. This report not only explores the heuristic techniques used for flight path calculation, but also includes real world application and flight test results in a Micro Air Vehicle equipped with an autopilot.
AFIT Designator
AFIT-GAE-ENY-08-M28
DTIC Accession Number
ADA484680
Recommended Citation
Terning, Nate A., "Real-Time Navigation and Flight Path Generation for Tracking Stop-and-Go Targets with Miniature Air Vehicles" (2008). Theses and Dissertations. 2693.
https://scholar.afit.edu/etd/2693