Trajectory tracking for quadrotors: An optimization‐based planning followed by controlling approach

• Published in: Journal of field robotics 2022-10, Vol.39 (7), p.1003-1013
• Main Authors: Kulathunga, Geesara, Devitt, Dmitry, Klimchik, Alexandr
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Algorithms; Constraint modelling; Euclidean distance transformation map; Euclidean geometry; Iterative methods; linear quadratic Gaussian; motion planning; multiple shooting; Nonlinear control; nonlinear model predictive control; obstacle avoidance; Optimal control; Optimization; Predictive control; Rotary wing aircraft; Tracking
• ISSN: 1556-4959; 1556-4967
• DOI: 10.1002/rob.22084

We present an optimization‐based reference trajectory tracking method for quadrotor robots for slow‐speed maneuvers. The proposed method uses planning followed by the controlling paradigm. The basic concept of the proposed method is an analogy with linear quadratic Gaussian in which nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) is employed for predicting optimal control policy in each iteration. Multiple‐shooting is suggested over direct‐collocation for imposing constraints when modeling the NMPC. Incremental Euclidean distance transformation map is constructed for obtaining the closest free distances relative to the predicted trajectory; these distances are considered obstacle constraints. The reference trajectory is generated ensuring dynamic feasibility. The objective is to minimize the error between the quadrotor's current pose and the desired reference trajectory pose in each iteration. Finally, we compared the proposed method with two other approaches and showed that the proposed method outperforms the said approaches in terms of reaching the goal without any collision. Additionally, we published a new data set that can be used for evaluating the performance of trajectory tracking algorithms.