6533b831fe1ef96bd1298442

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Elementary Clothoid-Based Three-Dimensional Curve for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

subject

description

UNMANNED aerial vehicles (UAVs), either multirotor or fixed-wing UAVs, can be used in many fields to solve complex problems in safety [1], communications [2, 3], military applications [4, 5], civilian applications [6, 7], protection of nuclear plants [8], energy efficiency [9], nonlinear control [10, 11], and path planning [12], among others. Vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) is by far the most used UAV's configuration [13]. Probably the main reason is that, nowadays, there are lots of low-cost multirotor models. VTOL strategies can be applied to fixed-wing airplanes [14]; however, in normal operation they usually fly horizontally to keep a constant altitude [15, 16], but they need to perform changes in their heading and altitude very often, especially in cluttered environments [17].