Terminal-Angle-Constrained Guidance based on Sliding Mode Control for UAV Soft Landing on Ground Vehicles

Abstract: In this paper the problem of guidance formulation for autonomous soft landing of unmanned aerial vehicles on stationary, moving, or accelerating / maneuvering ground vehicles at desired approach angles in both azimuth and elevation is considered. Nonlinear engagement kinematics have been used. While integrated nonlinear controllers have been developed in the literature for this purpose, in practical implementations the controller inputs often need modification of the existing autopilot structure, which is challenging. In order to avoid that a higher-level guidance algorithm is designed in this paper leveraging sliding mode control-based approach. In the presented guidance formulation, target-state-dependent singularity can be avoided in the guidance command. The effectiveness of the presented guidance law is verified with numerical simulation studies. However, since the algorithm in its basic form is found to demand high guidance command at large distances from maneuvering ground targets, a two-phase guidance is presented next to avoid this problem and validated with numerical simulations. Finally, the efficacy of the modified guidance algorithm is validated by Software-In-The-Loop simulations for a realistic testbed.