Real-Time Guidance, Navigation and Control Framework for Fixed-Wing Aircraft Maneuvers in a Vertical Plane

The goal of this study is to create a real-time guidance, navigation and control (GNC) framework for a fixed-wing aircraft (FWA) to perform various maneuvers in a vertical plane. This study offers a new approach for improving the FWA autonomy by enabling real-time sensor data fusion, targeting and re-targeting capabilities, new analytical/ numerical trajectory and attitude control solutions, and target-relative guidance. Existing FWA dynamical models are based on the traditional decoupling of their motion. This paper extends the utility of the concept of an instantaneous screw axis in guidance and control thereby promoting a new vision to general 6-degrees-of-freedom rigid body motion control. The existing flight vehicle guidance and control functions are mainly iterative and implicit, platform-specific, utilize pre-determined target states or way points, and executed typically utilizing the decoupled motion dynamical models. The research presented in this paper produces the GNC framework with the real-time target-relative guidance system, which is explicit and free of iterations, provide an onboard computation of the target states, executable for an uncoupled motion, and adjustable to various FWA and other unmanned aerial system platforms. An illustrative example is considered for a FWA maneuver in a vertical plane.