A Tube-based Robust MPC for a Fixed-wing UAV: an Application for Precision Farming

Abstract: The techniques of precision agriculture include the possibility to execute crop monitoring tasks through the application of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). These platforms are flexible, easy to use and low-cost, and they are the best candidates for improving the farm efficiency and productivity. In this research, a guidance algorithm and a robust control system are combined to guarantee the robustness of the system to additive noise (i.e. wind disturbance) and uncertainties (i.e. model parameter variations). A small fixed-wing UAV with an autonomy of about $1$ hour is proposed as case study, to reduce the cost of monitoring and increasing the stability performance of the system. A waypoint-grid on a paddy field is verified by hardware-in-the loop tests. The control scheme provides good results with a low computational effort, guaranteeing the repeatability of the monitoring and reduction of the costs.