Compensation for Time Delays in the Navigation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

This paper presents a new method of compensating for time delays in the navigation of UAVs when the minimum and maximum time delay experienced by the UAV in receiving command signals can be estimated. The aerial vehicles are controlled with a coordinated lateral controller. The operator signals are delayed and a bank of recursive least squares (RLS) filters are used to identify the delay and the target waypoint. Hypothesis testing is implemented to select the filter that most closely matches the delay. Once a filter is selected, the UAV then computes its heading to the estimated target waypoint and self-navigates its way to the waypoint while keeping track of the operator commands.