E-042

Path Following by Curve Fitting with Feasible Trajectories

Authors: Ruggero Frezza
Affiliation: Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informatica of the Universit\`a di Padova, Italy

Abstract
In this paper, we address the problem of following a path in space with a wheeled or an air vehicle in coordinated flight. The problem is approached as a constrained approximation of the desired path with feasible trajectories of the vehicle. The result is a predictive, linear output feedback which stabilizes the vehicle about the target contour.

The original contributions presented in this paper include: (a) a thourough stability analysis of the path following control law with a full characterization of the convergence properties in terms of the parameters of the controller; (b) the generalization to dynamical models; (c) the application to the control of an helicopter in coordinated flight.

This work was partially developed while visiting the Robotics Lab of the University of California, Berkeley.

Ruggero Frezza
Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informatica of the Universit\`a di Padova, Italy
frezza@dei.unipd.it