Robust trajectory optimisation for transitions of tiltwing VTOL aircraft

Conference item

We propose a method to generate robust and optimal trajectories for the transition of a tiltwing Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) aircraft leveraging concepts from convex optimisation, tube-based nonlinear Model Predictive Control (MPC) and Difference of Convex (DC) functions decomposition. The approach relies on computing DC decompositions of dynamic models in order to exploit convexity properties and develop a tractable robust optimisation that solves a sequence of convex programs converging to a local optimum of the trajectory generation problem. The algorithm developed is applied to an Urban Air Mobility case study. The resulting solutions are robust to approximation errors in dynamic models and provide safe trajectories for aggressive transition manoeuvres at constant altitude.

Authors: Doff-Sotta, M; Cannon, MR; Bacic, M

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: IEEE
• Host title: 2023 IEEE Conference on Control Technology and Applications (CCTA)
• Pages: 425-431
• Publication date: 2023-09-22
• Acceptance date: 2023-06-09
• Event title: 7th IEEE Conference on Control Technology and Applications (CCTA) 2023
• Event location: Bridgetown, Barbados
• Event website: https://ieeeccta.org/
• Event start date: 2023-08-16
• Event end date: 2023-08-18
• DOI: 10.1109/CCTA54093.2023.10253282
• EISSN: 2768-0770
• ISSN: 2768-0762
• EISBN: 9798350335446
• ISBN: 9798350335453
• Language: English
• Keywords: robust tube MPC; tiltwing VTOL aircraft; convex optimisation; urban air mobility; DC decomposition