A Lyapunov Guidance Vector Field Based Continuous Curvature Path Generation for Waypoint Following of UAVs

This paper generates a continuous curvature path for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to converge to a straight-line path using the Lyapunov Guidance Vector Field (LGVF) approach. Further, a waypoint following method that utilizes the straight line convergence algorithm along with a switching technique to transit between two consecutive waypoint segments to find a near time-optimal and smooth path has been presented. Numerical examples demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is better in comparison to the other well-performing algorithms existing in the literature and the corresponding results have been included.