Optimal Trajectory Planning and Lqr Control for a Quadrotor Uav

As research into UAVs accelerates into the 21st century, alternatives to fixed wing vehicles such as the quadrotor are causing interest. The quadrotor is a small agile vehicle which could be suitable for search and rescue, surveillance and remote inspection. For autonomous operation a control system that incorporates both trajectory planning and trajectory following is required. Trajectory planning can be posed as a constrained optimization problem typically within the control space and with some constraints being placed in the output space. However, differential flatness enables the optimization to occur within the output space and therefore simplifies the problem. A parameterization of the output is required to reduce the problem to a finite dimensional problem, this can be done using any number of techniques. Trajectory following can be achieved using linear multivariable control techniques such as LQR control.