Scaling effects in guidance performance in confined environments

Abhishek Verma, Bérénice Mettler

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

5 Scopus citations

Abstract

Scaling effects relating the maneuvering capabilities of a vehicle and the scale characteristics of a task environment play an important role in how the performance of a guidance system plays out. These effects are most significant for unmanned aerial vehicles because they are built in a much broader range of scales than manned vehicles. This paper investigates how scaling effects should be accounted for in the evaluation of guidance performance. It proposes a nondimensional quantity called the maneuvering environment scale ratio that captures the relationship between the maneuvering limits of a vehicle and the scale characteristics of a task environment. This paper also formalizes the idea of agent-environment dynamic fit for guidance tasks and uses the maneuvering environment scale ratio to measure the fit.Atask includes the vehicle dynamics, task environment, and mission objective. Agent-environment dynamic fit for a task is measured both quantitatively and qualitatively using the maneuvering environment scale ratio trajectory for an optimal solution. Finally, the paper demonstrates the application of the maneuvering environment scale ratio for quantifying the dynamic fit between an agent (guidance system) and environment using examples motivated by recent work in guidance systems benchmarking.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)1527-1538
Number of pages12
JournalJournal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics
Volume39
Issue number7
DOIs
StatePublished - 2016

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This research work was made possible thanks to the financial support fromtheNational ScienceFoundation (NSF/CMMI-1254906) and the Office of Naval Research (11361538). The authors are very grateful for the thorough comments provided by the reviewers.

Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2016 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc.

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