Linear vs Nonlinear MPC for Trajectory Tracking Applied to Rotary Wing Micro Aerial Vehicles
This work provides a detailed comparison for engineers designing control systems for MAVs in cluttered or disturbed environments, but it is incremental as it evaluates existing methods.
The paper compared linear and nonlinear model predictive control for trajectory tracking of rotary-wing micro aerial vehicles, finding that NMPC offers better tracking performance but at higher computational cost, with specific metrics evaluated under nominal and wind-disturbed conditions.
Precise trajectory tracking is a crucial property for \acp{MAV} to operate in cluttered environment or under disturbances. In this paper we present a detailed comparison between two state-of-the-art model-based control techniques for \ac{MAV} trajectory tracking. A classical \ac{LMPC} is presented and compared against a more advanced \ac{NMPC} that considers the full system model. In a careful analysis we show the advantages and disadvantages of the two implementations in terms of speed and tracking performance. This is achieved by evaluating hovering performance, step response, and aggressive trajectory tracking under nominal conditions and under external wind disturbances.