Computing minimum-time trajectories for quadrotors via transverse coordinates

Abstract

In this paper we present a novel strategy to compute minimum-time trajectories for quadrotors. In particular, we consider the motion in constrained environments, taking into account the physical limitations of the vehicle. Instead of approaching the optimization problem in its standard time-parameterized formulation, the proposed strategy is based on an appealing re-formulation. Transverse coordinates, expressing the distance from a "reference" path, are used to parameterize the vehicle position and a spatial parameter is used as independent variable. This re-formulation allows us to (i) obtain a fixed horizon problem and (ii) easily formulate (even complex) position constraints. The effectiveness of the proposed strategy is proven by numerical computations on two different illustrative scenarios.