Computing short-time aircraft maneuvers using direct methods

This paper analyzes the applicability of direct methods to design optimal short-term spatial maneuvers for an unmanned vehicle in a faster than real-time scale. It starts by introducing different basic control schemes, which employ online trajectory generation. Next, it presents and analyzes the results obtained through two recently developed direct transcription (collocation) methods: the Gauss pseudospec-tral method and the Legendre-Gauss-Lobatto pseudosp ectral method. The achieved results are further compared with those found through the Pontryagin’s Maximum (Minimum) Principle, and the paper continues by providing another set of direct method simulations incorporating more realistic boundary conditions. Finally, the results obtained using the third direct method, based on inverse dynamics in the virtual domain, are presented and discussed.