UAV–UGVs cooperation: With a moving center based trajectory

This paper addresses the problem of relating the motion of a fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with a less constrained agent (LCA) whose motion pattern is comparable to unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs). The main challenge of the scenario is different velocity constraints for UAV and the LCA. To rise to the challenge, for fixed-wing UAV a novel moving center trajectory is proposed whose center is determined by the LCA. Moreover, the sufficient conditions on the proposed trajectory for fulfillment of UAV constraints are derived. In the next step, ambient disturbances like wind gust are considered for UAV heading rate computation which are mitigated by employment of the well known sliding mode controller. Simulation results validate the performance of the proposed approach. •The challenge of relating the UAV dynamics to a less constrained model is addressed.•The concept of fixed center limit cycle has been extended to a moving center one.•A novel trajectory for UAV has been proposed which is based on the introduced orbit.•Sufficient conditions on the trajectory are established to satisfy UAV constraints.