Flight test of a receding horizon controller for autonomous UAV guidance

This paper describes autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) guidance technologies developed and demonstrated in a flight test sponsored by the DARPA software enabled control program. The flight experiment took place in June 2004 using a Boeing UAV testbed and demonstrated important autonomy capabilities enabled by a receding horizon guidance controller and fault detection filter. These technologies were implemented using an application programming interface developed for real-time receding horizon control applications (RHC API) under Boeing's open control platform (OCP) embedded software environment. This paper describes the receding horizon controller (RHC) design process and demonstration scenarios which were designed to exercise and evaluate the primary functionalities of the control system. Simulation results of the key capabilities are shown and compared with recorded flight data for evaluation purposes.