Optimal terminal‐velocity‐control guidance for intercepting non‐cooperative maneuvering quadcopter

Abstract This paper proposes a three‐dimensional optimal terminal velocity control guidance for multicopter intercepting maneuvering drone with equal maneuverability level. We investigate a novel multi‐rate extended Kalman filter‐based approach to estimate target's velocity and acceleration by fusing the measurements of onboard machine vision algorithm, electro‐optical pod, and inertial navigation system. The estimated target information is helpfully incorporated into the formulation of relative kinematics, based on which the guidance problem is naturally decoupled and optimal control theory can be directly leveraged to obtain the analytical solution. The key aspect of the proposed law lies in its low maneuverability requirement due to the inclusion of target information. The working principle and characteristics of the guidance command are theoretically analyzed to support our findings. Both numerical simulations and flight experiments are performed to validate the proposed approach and demonstrate its advantages.