Mathematical Model of Unmanned Aircraft In Ground Effect for Optimal Collision Avoidance

The fundamental aim of the present paper is to model the aerodynamic characteristics of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle(UAV) flying in ground effect. The second aim is to determine the relationship between the optimal avoidance maneuver and the control to execute it. In fact, this relationship is basilar to the development of a guidance scheme capable of approximating the optimal trajectory in real time. In the first part of this work ,a non-linear model is built in order to model the aerodynamic characteristics of an UAV flying In Ground Effect. To use a single model in the whole range of flying altitude, aerodynamic coefficients are modeled by means of hyperbolic equations. In particular, these ones depend on the ground distance. Such a model is employed to describe aerodynamic forces and moments in the equations of motion which are used in order to obtain optimal trajectories for solving the collision avoidance problem.