An Innovative Mission Management System for Fixed-Wing UAVs

This paper presents two innovative units linked together to build the main frame of a UAV Mis- sion Management System. The first unit is a Path Planner for small UAVs able to generate optimal paths in a tridimensional environment, generat- ing flyable and safe paths with the lowest com- putational effort. The second unit is the Flight Management System based on Nonlinear Model Predictive Control, that tracks the reference path and exploits a spherical camera model to avoid unpredicted obstacles along the path. The control system solves on-line (i.e. at each sampling time) a finite horizon (state horizon) open loop optimal control problem with a Genetic Algorithm. This algorithm finds the command sequence that min- imizes the tracking error with respect to the ref- erence path, driving the aircraft far from sensed obstacles and towards the desired trajectory.