Design, Optimal Guidance and Control of a Low-cost Re-usable Electric Model Rocket
This provides an inexpensive platform for researchers and engineers to test advanced guidance and control algorithms, reducing development time and costs for reusable launch vehicle technologies.
The paper tackles the high cost and complexity of developing guidance and control algorithms for autonomous vertical take-off and landing vehicles by designing a low-cost, reusable electric model rocket as a test-bed, and experimentally validates a real-time optimization-based algorithm that enables fully autonomous operation with on-board computations.
In the last decade, autonomous vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) vehicles have become increasingly important as they lower mission costs thanks to their re-usability. However, their development is complex, rendering even the basic experimental validation of the required advanced guidance and control (G & C) algorithms prohibitively time-consuming and costly. In this paper, we present the design of an inexpensive small-scale VTOL platform that can be built from off-the-shelf components for less than 1000 USD. The vehicle design mimics the first stage of a reusable launcher, making it a perfect test-bed for G & C algorithms. To control the vehicle during ascent and descent, we propose a real-time optimization-based G & C algorithm. The key features are a real-time minimum fuel and free-final-time optimal guidance combined with an offset-free tracking model predictive position controller. The vehicle hardware design and the G & C algorithm are experimentally validated both indoors and outdoor, showing reliable operation in a fully autonomous fashion with all computations done on-board and in real-time.