Path following control of unmanned quadrotor helicopter with obstacle avoidance capability

This paper proposes a new path following methodology combining with a obstacle avoidance scheme for unmanned quadrotor helicopter (UQH) capable of working in the cluttered and hazardous environments. A new cross-track error prediction based mechanism, where the cross-track error is estimated by utilizing the extend Kalman filter (EKF), is first developed for the path following scheme. Then, the UQH is equipped with obstacle avoidance capability employing a light-computational approach, the visibility graph algorithm. The priority of UQH is to switch to obstacles avoidance maneuvering in the presence of obstacles, and continue to execute the assigned mission after avoiding all hazardous objects blocking the desired path. The control system developed for attitude and position control of UQH is also introduced. Finally, extensive simulation studies on a nonlinear model of UQH with a series of dangerous scenarios are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology.