IEEE NL Technical Talk: Nonlinear Model Predictive Control for Autonomous Aerial Vehicles: Design, Analysis, and Real-time Validation

#nl-ieee #technical #engineering #UAV

Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) is an MPC variant that uses the nonlinear system model in its prediction. NMPC scheme has been recently used to control different autonomous mobile robots due to its capability to handle complex multi-input multi-output control problems
while addressing input and state constraints. NMPC showed promising stabilization and tracking performance, in addition to, impressive collision and obstacle avoidance performance. The control problem is formulated as an optimization problem with a predefined objective function, where the minimization of this function over a finite time horizon leads to the optimal control input values. This talk will (1) demonstrate the design of the NMPC scheme for an autonomous micro aerial vehicle (MAV), (2) provide the necessary conditions for stability guarantee of the closed-loop system, and (3) present the implementation of the control scheme on MATLAB using CasADi toolbox and present the real-time experimental implementation using Robot Operating System (ROS). Eventually, the presentation will highlight the possible directions to extend the given NMPC schemes for learning-based models.