Path-Following Guidance for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle with Bounded Lateral Acceleration

2026-03-28

AI Summary

This study addresses the challenge of three-dimensional path-following for unmanned aerial vehicles under explicit actuator constraints, particularly limited lateral acceleration. The authors propose a nonlinear guidance framework integrating nested saturation control, which, for the first time, rigorously embeds bounded lateral acceleration directly into the guidance law design. By formulating the problem in the path-tangential coordinate frame, the method establishes a general strategy for stable tracking of smooth three-dimensional paths and proves exponential convergence of lateral errors via Lyapunov theory. Numerical simulations demonstrate that, compared to existing approaches, the proposed scheme significantly improves tracking accuracy, reduces control effort, and enhances disturbance rejection robustness across straight-line, circular, and sinusoidal trajectories, offering both theoretical rigor and practical engineering applicability.

Abstract

This paper addresses the three-dimensional path-following guidance problem for unmanned aerial vehicles under explicit actuator constraints. Unlike conventional approaches that assume unbounded control inputs or handle saturation heuristically, the proposed method incorporates bounded lateral acceleration directly into the guidance design. A nonlinear guidance framework is developed employing a nested saturation-based control technique. The proposed guidance strategy guarantees bounded control inputs while ensuring exponential convergence of cross-track errors to zero. The formulation is applicable to general smooth paths and is systematically extended from planar to three-dimensional scenarios using a path-tangent coordinate framework. Rigorous stability analysis based on Lyapunov theory establishes convergence and feasibility properties of the closed-loop system. Numerical simulations on representative paths, including straight-line, circular, and sinusoidal paths, demonstrate that the proposed method achieves superior tracking performance, reduced control effort, and robustness against disturbances compared to existing guidance laws. The simplicity of the design and its compatibility with practical actuator limits make it suitable for real-world UAV applications.

Problem

• path-following
• unmanned aerial vehicle
• bounded lateral acceleration
• actuator constraints
• three-dimensional guidance

Innovation

• bounded lateral acceleration
• nested saturation control
• path-following guidance
• Lyapunov stability
• UAV path tracking