Aircraft Motion Control Algorithms for Airborne Geophysical Survey

Abstract. In an airborne geophysical survey, the control of moving objects requires forming optimal program (reference) trajectories. Optimality criteria differ depending on the tasks to be performed. The most obvious criterion is the time in which an object reaches its final position from an initial position. Problems with such a criterion are known as time-optimal control problems. This paper considers two control problems of this class related to the performance of a flight task by an aircraft during an airborne geophysical survey. Such a survey is traditionally carried out over a network of parallel routes. Accordingly, the first mode is to start the next survey route. The second mode is to approach the current straight segment of the route. The corresponding time-optimal control problems are posed and solved. The resulting solutions are the reference trajectories for the start and approach modes. The solutions are formally analyzed and methods for forming optimal trajectories and the corresponding controls implementing these trajectories are described. The onboard software implementation of these algorithms is described.

Keywords: Dubins’ car, time-optimal control problem, optimal control, Pontryagin’s maximum principle.