The unit dual quaternion based flight control for a fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle

In this paper the problem of controlling a fixed-wing UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) based on unit dual quaternion is studied. The unit dual quaternion is the most concise and the highest computing efficiency globally mathematical presentation to describe the attitude and position simultaneously. The dynamics of a fixed-wing UAV described by the unit dual quaternion is developed. Then a feedback linearization controller is devised according to the error dynamics of this underactuated and nonholonomic constrained system, which combined attitude and position control law to a single one. Finally, Simulation results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approaches.