Reachability conditions of UAVs net recovery based on pseudo-spectral methods

Net recovery is an advanced accurate-point recovery way for small fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), especially in limited recovery fields or naval vessels. In order to perform recovery successfully, the aerial vehicle must satisfy certain conditions to shut down the engine so that it can glide into the net without a crash. In this paper, an aircraft longitudinal dynamic model is taken into consideration. Given the initial position, we aim to obtain the feasible initial speed of the aircraft. This problem is formulated as an optimal control problem and then solved by Pseudo-Spectral methods. The simulation results show the initial state in the computational flight envelope can perform successful net recovery task.